Ismael Balanyà Moix (1921-2000) - Composición

The work is signed at the bottom and dated 1976.

The condition of the work is good.

The work is presented unframed.

Dimensions of the work: 62 x 82 cm.

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BIOGRAPHY OF THE ARTIST

Ismael Balanyà i Moix was born into a family of decorative painters and began his training at the drawing school founded by his father in Montblanc. After completing this initial training, at barely fourteen years old, he began collaborating with his father. With him he decorated a large part of the churches in the Conca de Barberà. After the Civil War he moved to Barcelona, where he enrolled at the Llotja School and later at the Massana School while continuing to work as a decorative painter. In 1945 he decided to seek a more creatively free environment than the gray postwar Spain offered, and after crossing the border into France on foot he obtained a political refugee passport and was able to settle in Paris for almost three years, attending the Higher School of Fine Arts, where he practiced intensively the fresco painting technique.

In 1949 he returned to Barcelona and began to participate fully in the city’s artistic life. Over the following years he took part in various group contests and solo exhibitions, such as the one held in 1960 at the Galeria Jaimes on Paseo de Gracia or the 1961 at the Galeria de Arte Dintel in Santander. In the eighties he would also frequently exhibit at the Galería Jaimes in Barcelona and in various venues in Montblanc and Reus. In 1965 he joined the Massana School of Barcelona as a professor of drawing, painting and mural techniques, and here he would work alternating teaching with painting practice until his retirement in 1986.

Ismael Balanyà worked throughout his career in various formats and techniques: oil on canvas, watercolors and gouache, engraving and others. However, undoubtedly the most representative part of his production is the large-format works on wall or on different supports (canvas or wood) affixed to the wall. This section includes the large-scale painting that we now present.

The work is a tourist and cultural panorama of Catalonia, where the author has highlighted, with a colorful and somewhat naïve stroke, traditions such as the castellers and the sardana, emblematic places and tourist attractions such as the Poblet Monastery, Montserrat or the Sagrada Familia and products as typical as Vilafranca del Penedès cava. The central part of the group, however, is occupied by a large tent and a family playing and relaxing on the beach. The Mediterranean Sea also occupies the bottom part of the entire composition. The painter chose these motifs to star in his work because this piece was commissioned by the now-defunct camping El Toro Bravo of Viladecans, an emblematic leisure space of the fifties–nineties in Catalonia, which disappeared in 2004 due to the expansion of El Prat airport. The painting is formed by four large wooden panels that can be mounted to form a flat surface or at an angle, depending on the space to which they adapt.

A good portion of Ismael Balanyà’s canvas works are preserved at the Montblanc Regional Museum and in private Catalan, French and German collections. Many of his monumental works are still preserved in situ, at the Massana School of Barcelona, the Poblet Monastery, the Poblet Town Hall and various stately houses, companies or hotels.