GENERALITAT DE CATALUNYA

A process of national acknowledgement of Antoni Clavé culminated in 1995. Specifically, the Palau de la Generalitat opened a number of rooms which with their careful arrangement of the artist’s pieces have over the years become one of the most iconic venues in the building in Plaça de Sant Jaume.

The country’s highest democratic institution received a considerable number of works as a result of Antoni Clavé’s generous decision to donate a varied selection of his artistic output. This meant that large matter paintings done under the influence of Informalism alongside works with textures and the use of collage so characteristic of the artist were added to the Catalan Government’s art collection. This selfless gift also included outstanding graphic and sculptural works.

There can be no doubt that the fact that works by Antoni Clavé have been permanently on display at the Palau de la Generalitat has a significance going beyond art and culture considering the historical upheavals of twentieth-century Catalonia, especially after 1939, and the way in which they shaped Antoni Clavé’s life and artistic journey. A former stable on the outskirts of the city in Roussillon which had been used for breeding horses, the Haras, had been turned into a compound for holding political refugees: the defeated Republican exiles. The young poster artist was at the beginning of a challenging exile which, notwithstanding his precarious circumstances, would gradually turn him into an international artist who never stopped longing for his country yet also refused to give up hope for a change which would bring about the return of democracy and national freedoms.

Thus in a way, the display of a significant part of Antoni Clavé’s artistic production at the Palau de la Generalitat is the result of historical justice, especially because exile played an undeniably pivotal role in his life for almost four decades. Indeed, so much so that it would not be presumptuous to point out that his example shows that exile is an ambivalent experience since it is as inseparable from loss as it is inextricably bound up with a framework open to unexpected opportunities. In the case of our artist, the source of this observation can be traced back to his first exhibition at the Galerie Vivant in the capital of Northern Catalonia on 28 February 1939, held under the guidance of Perpignan artist Martí Vivès. It was certainly a stroke of luck that added to an artistic talent which would no longer be curbed.

That said, therefore, the artworks which are succinctly brought together in this section have more than just an unquestionable aesthetic validity. They are the outcome of a reunion of the artist, who will never return from exile, with the country he left behind. It is a country which since the 1980s has been striving for the complete reconstruction of its institutions of self-government and democratic consolidation. The gathering of these works, some of them also politically activist, is without doubt the material embodiment of a time when the country was moving towards the institutionalisation of its rights and freedoms.

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