JOSÉ MARÍA SERT BADÍA (Barcelona, 1874 - 1945). "Summer or Africa", 1920. Oil on canvas.

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19th & 20th CENTURY PAINTINGS & ORIENTALISM

By Setdart Auction House

Jul 15, 2021

Set Reminder 2021-07-15 08:00:00 2021-07-15 08:00:00 America/New_York Bidsquare Bidsquare : 19th & 20th CENTURY PAINTINGS & ORIENTALISM https://www.bidsquare.com/auctions/setdart-auction-house/19th-20th-century-paintings-orientalism-7212
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  JOSÉ MARÍA SERT BADÍA (Barcelona, 1874 - 1945). "Summer or Africa", 1920. Set of three preparatory sketches for the three definitive panels of the work "The Four Seasons", cladding for the dining room of the hunting lodge of the Château de Laversine (Chantilly, France), owned by the Barons de Rothschild. The final side panels (363 x 90 cm and 363 x 91 cm) are currently housed in the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. The central one (310 x 173 cm), on the other hand, belongs to a private collection. Oil on canvas. Provenance: Manuel Barbié Gallery. Definitive work reproduced in "José María Sert. His life and work", Alberto Castillo and Alexandre Cirici Pellicer, Editorial Argós, Plate 28, 1949. Bibliography consulted: "José María Sert. His life and work", Alberto Castillo and Alexandre Cirici Pellicer, Editorial Argós, 1949, p. 97. Sizes: 66 x 18 cm; 86 x 38 cm (frame) / 66 x 35 cm; 86 x 55 cm (frame) / 66 x 18 cm; 86 x 38 cm (frame). José María Sert decorated the Rothschild pavilion with a cycle of six mural paintings on wood representing different parts of the world, a subject that must have been on the artist's mind since he gave free rein to exoticism in the decorations of Kent House (1913) and in the scenes of "The Joy of Humanity" that decorated the walls of Lady Ripon's drawing room (1915). In Rothschild, the cycle of paintings of the four parts of the world were combined with the four seasons, so that Spring corresponded to Asia, Summer to Africa, Autumn to Europe and Winter to America. Alberto Castillo, an expert on the figure of Sert, notes: "These paintings are far superior in complexity to Sert's previous compositions, in which when multiple figures were presented, they were generally comparsas without personality. In this case, each figure has received special care and the groups have been composed with a meticulous attention to detail, which is uncommon in the artist's work". We are, therefore, in front of the preparatory sketches of the allegory of summer or Africa, consisting of three compositions: the most important (the central one) has in the foreground a group of characters on a background of palm trees. A monster seated on top of a grandstand, with its front legs on the mythical mirror ball and its enormous jaws open, suffers the arrows of three archers who, mysteriously, draw their bows without visible strings. Next to the monster, sinister characters, such as a fairground charlatan and two figures struggling with each other; the panels that complete this African scene (right and left) show us fantastically dressed figures accompanied by small elephants varnished in blue. The three compositions ultimately present trunks carrying a large candle, in a primitivist manner, in a compositional display typical of one of the geniuses of Catalan painting. Trained with Benito Mercadé and Pere Borrell, Sert was a member of the Círculo Artístico de Sant Lluc, and later a disciple of A. de Riquer. In 1900 Torras i Bages commissioned a large mural decoration for the cathedral of Vic, of which he presented sketches and preparatory canvases in 1905 and 1907 in Barcelona and Paris, of which this piece is an example. Through his exhibitions abroad, he soon acquired extraordinary prestige among the French and English aristocracy, for whom he created sumptuous decorations. In 1908 he decorated the Sala de los Pasos Perdidos of the Palace of Justice in Barcelona, and in 1910 he presented at the Salon d'Automne in Paris the mural decoration of the ballroom of the Marquis of Alella (Barcelona) and decorated the music room of the Princess of Polignac in Paris. Two years later he exhibited an important group of works at the Salon in the French capital. In the following years he worked for Queen Victoria Eugenia (Santander) and for Robert Rotschild (Chantilly), and exhibited individually in London, in the Agnew room. In 1920 he married Maria Godebska, "Misia", a muse of the Parisian artistic scene, in Paris. He made new murals for important houses in Park Lane (England), Buenos Aires, Palm Beach and Paris, and in 1926 he made, before a great expectation, an exhibition of his works for the cathedral of Vic the Jeu de Paume in Paris. In 1927, with the support of his friend and protector Francesc Cambó, he completed the main part of the cathedral's decoration, which was completed with the construction of the lunettes between 1928 and 1929. In 1930 he was named academician of San Fernando, and in the following years he worked all over the world, creating important murals such as those of the Waldorf Astoria in New York, the chapel of the Palacio de Liria in Madrid or the council hall of the League of Nations in Geneva. He was the most eminent decorative painter of his time, and his style was characterized by a great imagination at the service of a rhetorical language influenced by orientalism and the expressionism of his style.
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