José Royo (1941) - Cosecha

Harvest
Oil painting on canvas by the Valencian painter José Royo (Valencia, 1941)
Measurements with frame: 70x62 cm
Measurements without frame: 45x36 cm
Painting created between 1980/1981
Work acquired at EMECE Gallery (Alcoy, Alicante) between 1981/1982
Condition of the painting and the frame: excellent.
A valued work. Its market value doubles the starting price set in this auction

Royo is an artist educated in classicism. Born in Valencia with the fated lot of a painter, he studied with the best masters of his city, until he was old enough to enter the Higher School of Fine Arts of San Carlos. He completed his studies by traveling through the great museums of the world, soaking up the classical masters such as Velázquez, Vermeer or Goya, and the Impressionist masters. Numerous influences have marked his pictorial development to the point of becoming himself a master of post-impressionism, heir to Renoir, Monet or Bonnard.

The decisive change in his painting and in his life arrives when the painter and his family decide to move their home to the countryside. Among the pines, Royo builds the house that will bring light and color to his work, one that will be an exact replica of his iconography and vice versa. Yet the essence of Mediterranean culture demanded, more insistently every time, to paint the sea, which from ancient Greece to Sorolla had been the emblem of so many masters and thinkers. Royo found his second paradise in Mallorca, where a whirlwind of rocks, pines and salted blues has forced him to move there every summer to paint and contemplate.

The tranquility in which Royo’s daily life unfolds produces the opposite effect in his professional trajectory, in which, from the seventies onward, successes come at a dizzying pace, first in Spain, soon across Europe. The Mediterranean charm shaped by Royo’s virtuosity also captivated the Japanese market and later South America, but it has been, above all, success in the United States that has solidified this artist as one of the key artistic figures of our era.

His special series of works, in which Royo explores new formats, materials and brushstrokes (Ingrávidos, Genesis, Sagittas, Harem, Women, Equus or Essence) have been exhibited in Museums such as the Coral Springs Museum (Miami), the Diocesan Museum (Barcelona), Haggim Museum in Stockton (California), Artrium Geneva, Museu Miramar (Sitges), Palau de la Música (Valencia), Almudín of Valencia, Palace of the Serrano (Ávila).

His flawless painting technique, mastery of drawing and the extreme emotion reflected in the light and color of his works have made Royo an indispensable painter in the best collections around the world. Mediterranean passion is lived in his paintings, but so is the mastery and rigor of someone who never stops perfecting technique and command of his craft.