219 - JOAN JOSEP THARRATS VIDAL (Girona, 1918 – Barcelona, 2001).

JOAN JOSEP THARRATS VIDAL (Girona, 1918 – Barcelona, 2001). Untitled. Mixed media on cardboard. Signed. Dimensions: 18 x 18 cm; 26 x 26 cm (frame). After beginning his training in Béziers (France), Tharrats returned to Barcelona in 1935 and enrolled at the Massana School. He began his artistic career after the Civil War, in a style that evolved from an initial impressionist approach toward progressive abstraction, influenced by Mondrian and Kandinsky. A co-founder of Dau al Set alongside Brossa, Ponç, Cuixart, and Tàpies, Tharrats held his first solo exhibition in 1949 at the El Jardín galleries in Barcelona. Beginning in 1954, he exhibited regularly at the Sala Gaspar in Barcelona, as well as in Stockholm and New York in 1955, at the São Paulo Biennial in 1959, and at the Venice Biennials in 1960 and 1964. In 1955, following the dissolution of Dau al Set, he helped found the Taüll group alongside Muxart, Guinovart, and his former colleagues Cuixart and Tàpies. Eleven years later, in 1966, he was also a founding member of the Association of Contemporary Artists. A pioneer of postwar Catalan avant-garde art, Tharrats evolved from the surrealist-influenced linear abstraction of his Dau al Set period to a richly textured, colorful, free-form informalism. In addition to easel painting, he developed his own version of printmaking techniques (“maculaturas”) and also created posters, book illustrations, murals, stained glass, mosaics, jewelry, and opera set designs. In 1983 he was awarded the Cross of Sant Jordi, and in 1994 the National Prize for the Visual Arts. That same year he became a member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Jordi. His work is featured in various museums and collections around the world, such as MoMA and the Guggenheim in New York, the Tate Gallery in London, MACBA, and the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid.