ISIDRO NONELL Y MONTURIOL (1947)

Born Barcelona 1873.
Died Barcelona 1911.

Painter who was instrumental in the Catalan artistic revival of the early 2oth century and is considered a pioneer of modern painting in Spain.

An immensely gifted artist who died at an early age he is unjustly remembered only as an associate of the young Pablo Picasso.

Beginning as a landscape painter in the Impressionist manner Nonell turned in 1890 to realistic portraits of Gypsies and poor people.

These works were exhibited with success in Barcelona and by the dealer Ambroise Vollard in Paris in 1899.

In Barcelona he was the leader of a group of young artists the Quatre Gats which included Picasso who was a careful student of Nonell´s realistic works.

After studying the work of the French artists Honoré Daumier and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec in Paris he began experimenting with more simplified and abstract forms, notably in a series of expressive still lifes.

Very much an avant-garde artist he did not achieve Europeann fame until a highly successful show in 1910.
In the forefront of modern Spanish painting and tending more and more toward abstractions he died at the peak of his powers.