JAUME SANS (Sitges, Barcelona, 1914-1987). Untitled,... Lot 30

JAUME SANS (Sitges, Barcelona, 1914-1987). Untitled, c. 1955. Mixed media on táblex. Unsigned. Size: 58 x 67 cm; 60 x 69 cm (frame). Jaume Sans spent most of his childhood in Cuba. Years later, in Barcelona, he came into contact with the magazine L Amic de les Arts, one of the periodicals that contributed to revolutionising the artistic panorama of the 1920s, published in Sitges between 1926 and 1929. Artists such as Salvador Dalí, the critic Sebastià Gasch and the writers J.V. Foix and Lluís Montanyá were grouped around the magazine. During the first decades of the 20th century, avant-garde centres in Spain were almost non-existent, with the rare exception of Barcelona. The city was a centre for artists exiled from the First World War and its tradition of innovation allowed for the appearance of more daring exhibition programmes. Exhibitions such as that of the Galeries Dalmau in 1912, which was the second Cubist art exhibition held outside Paris, or the Universal Exhibition of 1929, which included Mies van der Rohe's revolutionary German pavilion, placed the city on the European art map. During 1932 and 1933 Jaume Sans attended the School of Arts and Crafts, in the face of his family's opposition, where he met Ángel Ferrant, who was to have a profound influence on his work. Sans was a member of Amics de l'Art Nou (ADLAN), a group of artists who promoted the dissemination of new arts and organised exhibitions such as Alexander Calder's Circus in Miniature and Joan Miró's Objects. In 1935 he showed his sculptural work together with Ramon Marinel-lo and Eudald Serra at the Tres Esculptors exhibition organised by ADLAN at the Galeries d'Art Catalònia in Barcelona. This surrealist-style exhibition was a key event in the evolution of contemporary Catalan sculpture.