JOAQUÍN CLAUSELL
(San Francisco de Campeche, 1866 - Lagunas de Zempoala, Morelos, 1935)
Marina de Colima
Signed
Oil on canvas
With label from the National Museum of Art.
It has slight cracks.
As an artist he was self-taught, as he never went to art school. His works highlight his sensitivity, intuition, exalted love and deep understanding of Mexican nature. It was in Europe around the year 1896, when he met Claude Monet and the magnetic Parisian impressionist world, whose techniques and colors would represent a milestone in his artistic career, being the only Mexican painter who dedicated his entire work to this movement; painter of the reverberations of light, of the transparencies of the air, of the rich smell of its vegetation, of rocks, of water. Joaquín Clausell occupies a prominent place in Mexican painting of the 20th century. He is "our impressionist painter par excellence", his way of capturing small landscape scenes and turning them into a complete reality has not been surpassed.
Clausell"s work and life reflect the circumstances in which he lived, the places he passed through, his concerns and temperament. He lived through a difficult period in our history, full of social and political contradictions, from his training as a lawyer and politician during the Porfirio Díaz regime, in which he played an important role as a firm opponent of the existing regime, to his beginning in painting at the beginning of the century; the development of the armed movement of the revolution, a stage in which he abandoned painting and, finally, the period of consolidation of the country, as well as the return to his artistic activity, from 1921 to his death.
Source consulted: TOVAR Y DE TERESA, Rafael, et al. Joaquín Clausell and the echoes of impressionism in Mexico. Mexico. National Museum of Art. 1995. p. 65.
50 x 75.5 cm