Joaquín Sunyer Sitges 1874-1956

José Sala, Barcelona
Purchased from the above by the present owner

Rafael Benet, Sunyer, Barcelona, 1975, p. 70,  no. 119, catalogued and illustrated; p. 271, illustrated

Painted in Barcelona in 1915, following the many years that Sunyer had lived in France, mainly based in Paris. The reduced palette, accomplished spatial foreshortening and the frank sophistication of the sitter (most probably the artist's wife) in the present work, expresses to perfection how international Sunyer's aesthetic had become during his extended years abroad, and how completely Sunyer was immersed in the modernist taste of the time.

Sunyer had first arrived in Paris in 1896, where he soon became associated with a number of like-minded young Catalan painters. By 1901 he had moved into a studio in the Batteau Lavoir with Ricardo Canals; it was there that both he and Canals came into direct contact with Picasso who took over the studio of sculptor Paco Durrio in 1904. As well as Canals, Picasso and Sunyer, the Spanish circle there included the painters Isidro Nonell, Ramón Pichot and Ignacio Zuloaga as well as the sculptor Manolo Hugue.

Canals became especially friendly with the young Picasso, who painted his wife in 1905. Picasso, however, had a more volatile relationship with Sunyer, not least due to their shared romantic interest in Fernande Olivier. Nonetheless, keenly aware of the other's work, Sunyer, developed a telling frankness of execution in his portrait studies.

As well as his early turbulent years in Paris, however, the present work also reflects the time that Sunyer spent in Catalonia and the south of France. In Spain he became the leading adherent of Noucentisme, which encouraged a return to order and balance, a movement that gained momentum with the publication of the Almanac dels Noucentistes in 1911. In parallel in France, Sunyer retained his strong links and friendships with the leading artists of the day. Attracted to Maillol's placid Mediterranean classicism, and renewed wider interest in Cézanne as explored in the work of André Derain, Sunyer also joined up with the first School of Ceret in 1912 that had begun with Picasso, Georges Braque and Juan Gris in 1910.