All newsStorage Room insight: «Pietà», by Pere Daura
On display this April in the Storage Room Insight is Pietà (c. 1958) by Pere Daura, donated to the museum in 1995 by Martha Randolph Daura, the artist’s daughter.
Daura studied at the Escola de la Llotja in Barcelona, where he was a student of José Ruiz Blasco. He began his career in stage design under the guidance of Joaquim Jiménez i Solà and Josep Calvo, and completed his training at the Ateneu Enciclopèdic Popular.
His life’s journey took him to various places. In Paris, where he married the Virginian painter Louise Blair in 1928, he co-founded the Cercle et Carré group (1929–1930), alongside Joaquín Torres-García and Michel Seuphor. He also lived in Occitania, in Saint-Cirq-Lapopie (Quercy), while maintaining strong ties to Catalonia, where he won an award in the 1931 Montserrat competition. After being wounded on the Aragon front during the Spanish Civil War in 1937, he returned to Occitania and, finally, in 1939, settled in Virginia (USA) with his family.
Throughout his artistic career, he taught at several universities in the state of Virginia. His work, marked by a strong sense of individuality and great sensitivity, reflects the influence of Fauvism and is characterised by remarkable expressive vigour. He specialised in still life, portraiture, figurative art, and, in particular, landscape painting, as seen in the works in our permanent collection, such as Way of Saint Michael. Montserrat (1931), Martha in Yellow Dress (c. 1935) and Saint-Cirq-Lapopie (1930–1939).
Finally, he also explored mural decoration and, in his later years, sculpture, with a clear expressionist tendency, as evidenced by the wooden work on display this month.