By Rafael Duran Benet
Located in Sitges, Barcelona
Cadaqués Mediterranean Landscape with Olive Trees, Costa Brava
Title: Cadaqués Mediterranean Landscape
Artist: Rafael Duran Benet (Terrassa, 1931 – Barcelona, 2015)
Technique: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 60 × 73 cm (23.6 × 28.7 in)
Date: c. 1990
Signed: Yes, lower right
Condition: Good vintage condition
Frame: Unframed
Origin: Spain
Description
Atmospheric Mediterranean landscape depicting Cadaqués, one of the most iconic villages of the Costa Brava in Catalonia, Spain. Rafael Duran Benet presents the white architecture of the coastal town rising beyond a foreground of olive trees and cultivated terraces, combining silvery greens, blues, violet shadows and luminous whites.
The composition is particularly characteristic of the artist's mature Mediterranean landscapes. Rather than describing the village with architectural precision, Duran Benet constructs the scene through broad, energetic brushwork and overlapping fields of colour. The dark trunks and dense foliage of the olive trees create a strong foreground structure, while the brilliant white buildings of Cadaqués dissolve into the light of the distant coastline.
The painting captures the particular visual character of the Cap de Creus landscape: dry vegetation, intense Mediterranean light, whitewashed villages and a terrain descending toward the sea. Its palette and loose handling place the work within the tradition of Catalan Post-Impressionism and twentieth-century Mediterranean modernism.
At 60 × 73 cm, this is a substantial and highly decorative example of Duran Benet's landscape painting, combining the visual appeal of Cadaqués with the expressive colour and painterly surface for which his work is known.
Biography
Rafael Duran Benet (Terrassa, 1931 – Barcelona, 2015) was a Catalan painter...
Category
1990s Post-Impressionist Barcelona - Art
