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Fuentes Antonio"At the Café" Signed Oil Painting Moroccan Painting The Picasso of Tangierunfamiliar
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About the Item
Antonio Fuentes (Tangier 1905 - 1995) "At the Cafe. Oil on panel signed at lower left.
Also known as "The Master of Tangier" or "the Picasso of Tangier," Fuentes traversed the 20th century working in Spain, France, Italy, and then returned to his beloved Tangier, where his family owned the Fuentes Hotel and Café. A witty observer, he stops characters and moments of hometown life on his canvases. A man of the world, he comes into contact with the leading circles and the greatest masters of modern painting. This beautiful canvas stills the image of a café, of two elegant men sitting at a table talking while the waiter waits patiently in front of them-who knows, maybe it is the Fuentes café we see.
BIOGRAPHY
Antonio Fuentes was born on October 9, 1905 at the Hotel Fuentes in Tangier, the same hotel where Camille Saint-Saëns composed the "Dance Macabre." In the same little souk where Delacroix, Fortuny, Tapiró, Van Rysselberghe, Iturrino, Matisse painted..
As a child, Antonio Fuentes painted on the marble tables of Café Fuentes.
At the age of thirteen he made drawings for the "Héraut du Maroc." At age fourteen, illustrations for "La Sphère" and "Le Nouveau Monde." Without knowing it, he became the Toulouse-Lautrec of Tangier, as Pierre Gassier, the great French Hispanist, would call him years later. Encouraged by Spanish artists Abascal and Ortiz Echagüe, he decided to devote himself to painting. He draws the world around him and paints it, distorting it in an ironic way.
Having just completed his military service in Cadiz in 1925, Fuentes went to study in Madrid, where he entered the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in San Fernando. To this period dates a beautiful portrait of Federico García-Lorca, now deceased, but which we can see in some of Fuentes' photos in his studio.
The academicism of Madrid did not suit him and he decided to move to Paris, to the Montparnasse of the time. By 1929 he was painting all day at La Grande Chaumière, a huge, dislocated academy-studio from which all the big names in contemporary painting had passed. Fuentes draws with a brush and thus manages to give his sketches enormous strength and confidence. He became a great designer.
In Paris he made caricatures for "La Semaine de Paris." Through these caricatures he got to know all the Spanish personalities who went to Paris: Manuel de Falla, Encarnación López-"La Argentinita," Vicente Escudero, Andrés Segovia. To this period dates the "bailaores" series of Spanish ballets.
In the evenings he met in cafes with other Spanish painters-Souto, Pelayos, Bores. However, as Emilio Sanz de Soto quotes, "Fuentes was so absorbed in the spirit of the little souk of Tangier, in the daily coexistence with Arabs and Jews, that the painters he befriended were the two Jews Moïse Kisling and Chaïm Soutine."He disagreed with the artistic opinion of most of his compatriots because "they were all obsessed with Picasso, which was natural, but what for Picasso was a simple divinatory instinct, my compatriots converted into mental algebra. "In 1934 he left for Italy to continue his training. First in Florence, as a student of Felice Carena (1879-1965), then in Rome, where he entered the Academia Española de Bellas Artes. His admission signed by Valle-Inclán, director of the Academy, was also preserved. He continued to collaborate with the Spanish press, sending his illustrations from Italy.
At the end of World War II, Fuentes returned to Tangier and locked himself in his home, an atelier in the medina, at Place des Aissaouas. From then on he will exhibit only rarely: only when great friends or institutions can convince him. On these occasions his exhibitions are publicized by the big names in art and cultural criticism.
Beginning in 1973, Antonio Fuentes completely isolated himself both socially and artistically. He spends all his time in meditation, and his work focuses on abstraction, culminating in the 1990 series of rubbings. Fuentes is already 85 years old. He enjoys the freedom to devote himself exclusively to his work, with nothing distracting him from it and without having to "market" it. He sells in his studio when "the buyer is sufficiently eager to own my work. "Buyers had to venture out to see if Fuentes would receive them and, if so, to see if they could purchase works from him.
In the 1990s, the Consulate General of Spain in Tangier asked him to organize a retrospective exhibition of his works. Fuentes refuses. They later proposed that he turn his house into the Fuentes Museum and create a Traveling Anthological Exhibition, accompanied by a general catalog of his work, the photographic catalog of which was produced and consisted of more than 450 works distributed in major private collections around the world, from South America to the United States, from Europe to Saudi Arabia. Fuentes rejected both proposals.In the last years of his life, he spent time revealing, in almost systematic writing, all his memories. Fuentes recounts how he met Picasso in the art supply store next to the Castelucho gallery and his subsequent visit to the Master during the exhibition held in the gallery. During this visit, Antonio Fuentes suggested to Picasso, so as not to create interference between them, to walk through the exhibition in opposite directions and, on the way out, comment on which work was the best. Both agreed on their assessment: "A Gypsy" by Nonell. During this meeting with Picasso, Fuentes also tells us how the gallery owner, who had a spare work of his, offered him a large sum for a painting she wanted to buy from him. Fuentes had doubts about this sale. Picasso advised him not to hesitate and to sell it in order to gain a clientele in Paris. In this series of texts, Fuentes describes Picasso as an elderly man-Antonio was then twenty-five and Picasso was fifty-looking bourgeois, wearing a good English coat and a Borsalino hat, and whom he considered his father because of his humble attitude.Antonio Fuentes died in Tangier on July 25, 1995, never having stopped working. Even in the last days of his life he did not like to be distracted. He agreed to leave his house-workshop in the Tangier medina only the day before his death, which finally occurred at the Spanish Hospital in Tangier.
- Creator:Fuentes Antonio (1905 - 1995, Moroccan)
- Creation Year:unfamiliar
- Dimensions:Height: 28.75 in (73 cm)Width: 22.84 in (58 cm)
- More Editions & Sizes:pannello cm 53 x 38Price: $4,393
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:Very good condition.
- Gallery Location:Pistoia, IT
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU2746215763572
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