Josep Francesc Ràfols Fontanals

JOSEP FRANCESC RÀFOLS FONTANALS (Vilanova i la Geltrú, 1889 - Barcelona, 1965).
"Interior with a Young Woman", 1953.
Oil on canvas.
Signed and dated on the back.
There is a tear in the canvas, on the upper right-hand side.
Measurements: 90 x 72 cm; 110 x 90 cm (frame).
An architect by training but a painter by vocation, Josep Francesc Ràfols Fontanals formed an artistic group with Enric C. Ricart and Rafael Sala, and in Barcelona he was a member of the Círculo Artístico de Sant Lluc, where he founded the Agrupación Courbet with Josep Llorens i Artigas. The first exhibition in which the Agrupació Courbet took part was at the Palau de Belles Arts in 1918. In 1919 he became known as a draughtsman on the occasion of the exhibition at the Galeries Layetanas, together with Enric C. Ricart, Joan Miró, Mariano Antoni Espinal, Rafael Benet and Josep Obiols. He worked for the Repertorio Iconográfico de la Exposición de Barcelona under the orders of Jeroni Martorell. In 1921 he held his first solo exhibition at the Dalmau Galleries. In 1922, with a grant from the Junta para Ampliación de Estudios de Madrid, he travelled to Italy for nine months. He worked as a draughtsman with Gaudí. He was the first biographer of Gaudí (Antoni Gaudí, 1928), whose work led him to take an interest in Modernisme, and was the first to hold the Gaudí Chair (1956) at the School of Architecture, where he had been professor of art history since 1943, and collaborated in the magazine Destino. He was one of the first to deal with Catalan Modernisme (El arte modernista catalán, 1943; Modernisme i modernistes, 1949, considered the first complete treatise on the period and the movement, which changed his perception and marked the beginning of his study). He also published the three-volume inventory Diccionario biográfico de artistas de Cataluña (1951-54), the informative series Speculum Artis, also written by Alexandre Cirici and Josep Selva, El arte romántico en España (1954) and the monographs Ramon Casas, pintor (1948) and Degas y Rusiñol (1948), among others. As a painter, he cultivated a lyrical and intimate cézannism.