RAMÓN BARNADAS FÃBREGAS (Olot, Girona, 1909 - Vic, Barcelona, 1981).
"Landscape with figures".
Oil on canvas.
Signed in the lower left corner.
It presents some faults in the painting.
Measurements: 50 x 65 cm; 67 x 81 cm (frame).
A precocious painter, at the age of ten Ramón Barnadas entered the School of Fine Arts in Olot and made his individual debut in 1929, in the Layetanas Galleries in Barcelona. Only six years later he was appointed professor at the School of Fine Arts in his native city. He exhibited his work in Spain, Mexico and Switzerland, and won first prizes at the National Exhibition of Madrid and the International Exhibition of Palamós, the national landscape prize of the Estrada Foundation and the Ricardo Portabella prize. Barnadas, with his sketchy style, went beyond the lessons learned from realism and impressionism, becoming part of the evolutionary avant-garde of Catalonia at the time. This painter was able to establish his own language of landscape painting, seeking out and adopting new pictorial concepts. However, his work also encompassed the human figure, animal themes, still lifes, gypsy families and bathers, all depicted with the same inimitable talent as his landscapes. Throughout his career Barnadas showed his work at various exhibitions, notably those held at the Galerías Layetanas in 1927 and 1928, and at the Sala Barcino in 1933, 1924, 1935 and 1936, both in Barcelona. He was also awarded first prize for watercolour in the 9th Provincial Art Competition organised by the Diputació de Girona for his work "Gallinas" (Hens). After his death, his work continued to be shown to the public; in 2006 the Fontana d'Or cultural centre in Girona hosted a retrospective exhibition dedicated to him on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of his death, and in the same year another exhibition, organised by the Caixa de Girona, was dedicated to him. Between December 2008 and January 2009, the Les Voltes gallery in Olot presented a selection of his works to mark the centenary of his birth. He currently has two streets named after him, one in his native Olot and the other in the city of Girona.