Antoni Clavé

The painter and sculptor Antoni Clavé i Sanmartí was born in Barcelona in 1913. His later world career began out of financial necessity in 1927 with an apprenticeship as a house painter, during which he took evening classes in painting at the Escuela de Artes y Oficios "Llotja" with Félix Mestres, Josep Mongrell and Angel Ferrant. In 1932 he was employed by the Cinaes company, where he painted cinema posters. He also worked on the design of a children's magazine and created advertising posters. During the Spanish Civil War, he worked as a propaganda artist for the Republican government. At the end of the war, he fled to France to escape the Franco regime and was resident in Paris from 1939, where he worked as a comic artist and illustrator and made the acquaintance of Picasso. Picasso influenced the artist in the following years, as did his compatriot Joan Miró. In the period after the Second World War, he created important stage and costume designs for plays and ballets in Paris, Munich, London and New York, among other places. From 1954 he devoted himself exclusively to painting. After international solo exhibitions in museums and galleries, he was honoured in 1978 with a comprehensive retrospective at the Centre Pompidou Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris. He was also awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France with the rank of Commander. Antoni Clavé died in 2005. He is considered one of Spain's most important contemporary artists. Antoni Clavé's stage and costume design for Roland Petit's "Carmen" choreography, created in 1949, can be seen at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in the 2021/22 season as part of the ballet evening "I am a problem".