FRANCISCO GIMENO I ARASA (Tortosa, Tarragona, 1858 - Barcelona, 1927). "Self-portrait". Oil on táblex. Signed in the lower right corner. Size: 32 x 25 cm; 63,5 x 57 cm (frame). Painter and draughtsman, Francesc Gimeno began his training in Tortosa at the age of fourteen. In 1880 he settled in Barcelona and worked as a decorative painter. At this time, in the face of the undisputed triumph of modernist painting, Gimeno not only kept away from the Catalan artistic scene, but insisted on following in the footsteps of the painters of the Golden Age. Thus, while the usual destination for painters used to be Paris, he travelled to Madrid in 1884. There he worked with Carlos de Haes, a master of realist landscape painting, and devoted himself to studying the works in the Prado Museum, especially those of Velázquez. On his return to Barcelona in 1889, he suddenly rejected the contracts offered to him and returned to decorative painting. Gimeno remained almost always on the fringes of the commercial art world. For most of his life, he kept away from official circles and painted what was closest to him, his family and himself, without ever neglecting landscape painting. He took part in a few exhibitions, winning prizes such as honorary diplomas at the Barcelona exhibition of 1894 and the Madrid National Exhibition of 1904, but his works were frequently rejected by the juries. Critics and the public, accustomed to other types of painting, also rejected his expressive realism, his proletarian subject matter and his strong, thick brushstrokes. Disillusioned, he accentuated his marginalisation from the art world and society in general, and the open, passionate young man, full of enthusiasm, became a closed, untidy and self-marginalised man. In spite of everything, Gimeno also had a small circle of admirers. The critic Romà Jori, the painter Ignasi Mallol and the gallery owner Josep Dalmau organised the painter's first solo exhibition in 1915. The exhibition was a critical success and for the first time his artistic work was recognised. This marked the beginning of the artist's last period; some sponsorships appeared that freed Gimeno from his work as a painter-decorator and, from then on, he carried out various landscape campaigns. Recognition of Gimeno's work grew in the last years of his life, culminating in the homage paid to him at the Sala Parés at Christmas 1925. The MACBA dedicated an exhibition to him in 1978, and in 2006 the Museo Nacional de Arte de Cataluña held the first truly anthological exhibition devoted to his work. Gimeno is represented in the Museo del Prado, the MACBA in Barcelona, the Museo de Montserrat, the Museo Nacional de Arte de Cataluña, the Francisco Godía Foundation and the J. Sala collection, as well as in several important private collections. The scenes painted by Gimeno depict crude reality, without aesthetic concessions, and reveal an extraordinary painter and draughtsman. His work, of a direct and transgressive realism, was outstanding above all for its expressiveness, which dominates the rest of the artistic values. Gimeno always considered himself to be a worker, he never hid his status as a labourer, and neither his figure nor his work fitted in with the bourgeois circles and artistic circles of the time.