CLAVÉ FINE ART

Xavier Valls

Xavier Valls was a Spanish painter born in 1923 in Horta. He learned to paint with the Swiss sculptor Charles Collet who also taught him the modeling of various materials as well as the discovery of artists such as Cézanne, Matisse, and Picasso. In 1939 he studied at the Massana school then worked as a creator at the jeweler Ramon Sunyer Clarà. In 1946 he founded the Cercle Maillol with Suzanne Alemany, Charles Collet, Alfred Figueras and Bernard Sanjuan to organize exhibitions.

Valls received a grant in 1949 from the French Institute of Barcelona to go to Paris in Montparnasse. There he met other artists such as Antoni Clavé, Joaquin Peinado and Javier Vilató. He collaborated with Fernand Léger during 4 years on the realisation of the stained glass of the Audincourt church. The artist presented still lives and landscapes at the autumn Salon in 1953. Valls captures the everyday, the emotion, and the intimacy of a lived experience. His practice is composed of still lives, landscapes and portraits.

In 1955 he received the prize of the best still life at the Hispano-American Biennale. He has had exhibitions in galeries Henriette Gomès and Claude Bernard. Retrospectives on his work are organized in France and Spain in the 80s. In 1993 he received the Médailler d’or du mérite des beaux-arts and became commander of the arts and letters in France in 2000. Valls also received the national prize of fine arts of Catalonia the same year. He died in 2006 in Barcelona.
CLAVÉ FINE ART

S’INSCRIRE À LA NEWSLETTER