Frame size 83x73 cm.
Mariano Tur de Montis (Ibiza 1904 -1994). Son of the Ibizan general Don Juan Tur y Palau, of an old patrician family on the island, and of Doña Cristina de Montis and von der Klee. Ibiza painter who felt great admiration for the Spanish classics and the influence of Central European painting of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and especially that of the painter Manuel Benedito.
He received multiple praises in his various artistic exhibitions not only in Ibiza, but also in Palma de Mallorca, Mahón, Barcelona, Madrid and in European capitals such as London or Paris.
When he was only fifteen, he decided to go to meet Sorolla - when he was painting "The Smugglers" in the vicinity of his family mansion - to find out what opinion he deserved on the first portrait he had made of his mother. A few years later, and undoubtedly encouraged by the praiseworthy response received, he was already successfully overcoming the successive sieves of artistic criticism, until he stood out with the “subtle and aristocratic” style that characterized him, in such relevant competitions as the National Exhibition de Bellas Artes or at the Paris Salon.
Delving into his biography it is possible to recognize the main factors that would converge in this rapid and justified progression: the very cultural and artistic environment that surrounded him since his birth. The specific preparation with which his refined mother channeled his innate qualities and marked sensitivity. As well as, and above all, his own need to create beauty. Despite a brilliant degree in Law, he attended the Sant Jordi Academy of Fine Arts in Barcelona, complementing his training in Rome, Florence and Paris.
At the early date of 1925, the local press was pleased to transcribe the reviews of his exhibition in the Galerías Layetanas of Barcelona, and in which the acquisition of one of his works "Frivolities" for the Museum of Art took place. Modern of Palermo (Sicily).
After participating in 1926 in the Autumn Salon of Palma de Mallorca, together with Narcís Puget Viñas, and in 1929 in the Permanent Exhibition of Levante Art, one of his emblematic satisfactions would arrive: the praises that King Alfonso XIII himself dedicated to the stop before his painting Céfora, a painting in which his sister Guadalupe Tur de Montis was the model, during the National Exhibition of Fine Arts, held in Madrid. Oil that also deserved attention in the prestigious magazine La Esfera, which dedicated the cover of its number 20 of July 5, 1930, or the French magazine La Revue Moderne. In the magazine Arte y Hogar- in its number 56, the Marqués de Lozoya Director General of Fine Arts wrote a nice eulogy of the painter and his work in the photographic report dedicated to the beautiful and elegant Casa de los Tur de Ibiza.
It was precisely in 1930, when Tur de Montis began to interact amicably and professionally, with a select group of painters, both Spanish (Pla, Rigoberto Soler, Amadeo Roca and
Laureano Barrau...