By Rafael Duran Benet
Located in Sitges, Barcelona
Houses in Torcello, Venice, Colorful Italian Post-Impressionist Landscape
Artist: Rafael Durán Benet (1931–2015)
Original title: Casas de Torcello, Venecia
Date: 1985
Medium: Oil on canvas board
Dimensions: 13 × 16.1 in. 33x41 cm.
Signature: Signed lower right
Inscription: Titled and dated on the reverse
Condition: Good vintage condition, with minor age-related wear consistent with a work from 1985
Frame: Unframed
Period: 1980s
Style: Post-Impressionist / Modern Mediterranean
Description
A vibrant 1985 view of Torcello, Venice, by Catalan painter Rafael Durán Benet, depicting the quiet architecture and lush vegetation of one of the most evocative islands of the Venetian Lagoon.
Rather than portraying the monumental Venice of canals and palazzi, Durán Benet turns his attention to the more intimate atmosphere of Torcello. Red and ochre houses emerge between tall cypress trees and dense Mediterranean vegetation, while a broad foreground of luminous greens leads the eye toward the architecture.
The painting is particularly striking for its color. Intense Venetian reds, coral, ochre, olive green and deep emerald are set against a large expanse of atmospheric blue sky. Durán Benet builds the landscape with broad, confident brushstrokes, allowing individual marks and areas of impasto to remain clearly visible.
Architecture and vegetation are deliberately simplified into blocks of color and vertical rhythms. The result places the work within the European Post-Impressionist tradition while also revealing affinities with the expressive color of Fauvism and twentieth-century Mediterranean modernism.
Painted in 1985, the work belongs to the mature period of Durán Benet's career. The original title, Casas de Torcello, Venecia, and the date are inscribed on the reverse.
Its Venetian subject, compact dimensions and unusually rich palette make this an especially attractive example of Durán Benet's landscape painting.
About Rafael Durán Benet
Rafael Durán Benet (Terrassa, 1931 – Barcelona, 2015) was a Catalan painter particularly known for his landscapes, coastal scenes, urban views and still lifes.
He was the nephew of painter, critic and art historian Rafael Benet i Vancells and began painting at an early age. During the 1950s he became closely associated with Cadaqués, whose intense Mediterranean light and artistic environment had an important influence on the development of his painting.
Durán Benet held his first solo exhibition at Barcelona's Sala Vayreda in 1958 and subsequently developed a long exhibition career, including an important association with Barcelona's historic Sala Parés.
His mature work is characterized by vigorous brushwork, simplified forms and a powerful chromatic language. Landscapes are frequently constructed through broad areas of saturated color rather than meticulous description, connecting his work to the traditions of Post-Impressionism, Fauvism and Mediterranean modernism.
In 1980 he received the Henri Forman Prize from the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In 2011 his native Terrassa honored him with a retrospective exhibition at the Sala Muncunill.
Artistic context
The painting will appeal particularly to collectors interested in:
European Post-Impressionism
Spanish and Catalan Modern Art
Venice and Venetian Lagoon paintings
Italian landscapes
Mediterranean Modernism
Fauvist-influenced color
20th-century European landscape painting
Its chromatic intensity and simplified construction can be placed in dialogue with the broader Mediterranean landscape tradition associated with artists such as Raoul Dufy, André Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck and Joaquín Sorolla, while retaining Durán Benet's distinctly personal painterly language.
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Category
1980s Post-Impressionist Continental Europe - Art
