JOAN BUSQUETS I JANÉ (Barcelona, 1874 - 1949).
Modernist auxiliary cabinet, ca. 1900.
In walnut wood, pyro-engraved marquetry, marble, leaded glass, crystal, brass.
Signed.
Electrified.
Measurements: 142 x 50 x 45 cm.
Modernist auxiliary furniture designed by Joan Busquets, whose curved and organicist structure houses a lower cabinet with stylized vegetal stems in pyrography marquetry decorating its doors, followed by a marble top alternating with glass and a last body covered with leaded colored crystals recreating floral designs. As is characteristic of Busquets' furniture, a continuous line organizes the whole, so that the feet become uprights whose ribs reinforce the integral organic scheme.
The Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya conserves and exhibits a remarkable collection of projects and furniture by Joan Busquets. Furniture, ceiling lamps and other pieces are part of this set, as well as more than 150 original drawings-sketches made by hand by the author, in watercolor, ink and graphite pencil, where Joan Busquets highlights his mastery and where we see several examples very similar to the works of this set that we are auctioning.
Furniture designer and decorator, Joan Busquets is currently considered one of the most representative figures of Catalan modernism. He began his training in the family workshop, and then studied at the Escuela de La Llotja in Barcelona, where his teachers were Guitart and Lostaló. In the 1895-96 academic year he obtained a scholarship that allowed him to travel around Spain, which he obtained thanks to a project for a Renaissance-style bookcase-cabinet. He exhibited furniture projects for the first time at the Barcelona Exhibition of 1896. The workshop of Joan Busquets was one of the most outstanding of modernist Catalonia and is currently, together with the production of Gaspar Homar, the most representative testimony of the furniture and decoration of Catalan modernism. He was president of the Fomento de las Artes Decorativas between 1918 and 1921, and supervised the manufacture of furniture for Gaudí's Casa Calvet. Works by Busquets can currently be found in the National Art Museum of Catalonia, the Güell Palace in Barcelona, the National Museum of Decorative Arts and the Museum of Catalan Modernism in Barcelona, among others, as well as in several important private collections.