Antoni Clavé  (Spanish, 1913-2005) 

Antoni Clavé (Spanish, 1913–2005), born in Barcelona, began his career as a graphic artist. He worked for the Spanish Republic’s regime during the Spanish Civil War, and fled to France at the beginning of the right-wing Franco regime. In France he got to know Pablo Picasso, who exerted a great influence on Clavé’s style of painting. In his early work, he painted many household scenes, children, puppet-like women, clowns, and harlequins. From 1946 on, he also worked as a book illustrator and a set designer for ballet and theater houses in Paris, Munich, London, and New York. In the 1950s, Clavé returned to Spain; his paintings became increasingly abstracted, and he began experimenting with collage techniques. Clavé began creating sculptures in the 1960s, integrating found objects into his work, which often depicted soldiers and other military imagery. After his move to southern France, his painting become darker and more somber, though some of his series do refer to Picasso, French cities, or the urban scenes of New York. Clavé has had several solo exhibitions as well as a large retrospective at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 1978. He also exhibited work at documenta II in 1959 and documenta III in 1963, in Kassel, Germany, as well as at the Venice Bienniale in 1984. Clavé, now regarded as one of the most important Spanish painters of the 20th century, died in 2005.