PERE PRUNA OCERANS (Barcelona, 1904 - 1977)."La blanche".1925Oil on canvas.Signed and dated in the

PERE PRUNA OCERANS (Barcelona, 1904 - 1977).
"La blanche".1925
Oil on canvas.
Signed and dated in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 116 x 89 cm; 135,5 x 108,5 cm (frame).
The aura of Picasso's influence surrounds Pruna's work, and this is particularly evident in this work, which Pruna produced at a time when the most avant-garde European painters were looking back (to the Renaissance or Ancient Greece), reinventing classicism in their own way. Picasso was immersed in his classicist period when Pruna moved to Paris in the 1920s, and a relationship of friendship and mutual admiration began between them. The mark that the Malaga-born artist, in his post-Cubist period, left on Pruna is strongly felt in this painting. Elegance and simplicity are masterfully combined in this composition. The stylised profile of a young woman with her back to us is enhanced by the white scarf covering her black hair. A tight-fitting dress reveals the subtle swirl of her form. Faint silvery shadows define the curve of the buttocks, and these silvery glimpses reverberate on the girl's pearly flesh tones. Only a slight hint of crimson and the carmine of the fine lips interrupt the rich range of greys, which are also shared by the background. The room occupied by the figure is barely hinted at with a few linear strokes.
A mainly self-taught painter, Pere Pruna completed his training at the School of Fine Arts in Barcelona. After beginning to exhibit in Barcelona when he was still very young, he travelled to Paris in 1921, where he was helped and guided by Picasso. In the French capital he held a successful one-man show at the Galerie Percier, and came into contact with intellectuals such as Cocteau, Drieu la Rochelle, Max Jacob and others, with whom he founded the magazine "Philosophie" in 1924. Serge Diaghilev, who visited one of his exhibitions, also asked him to create the sets and costumes for the ballet "Les matelots" in 1925. From then on, he also worked on other musical works, such as "La vie de Polichinele" (1934) and "Oriane" (1938), among others. In 1928 he won second prize in the Carnegie Institute exhibition in Pittsburg and later, on his return to Barcelona, he won other awards such as the "Montserrat seen by Catalan artists" competition (1931) and the Nonell Prize (1936). Following the outbreak of the Civil War, Pruna continued his international exhibition activity, and his exhibition in London in 1937 was particularly noteworthy. After the war he combined his easel painting exhibitions with mural painting, a genre in which his works in the monastery of Montserrat were particularly celebrated. In 1965 he won the City of Barcelona Prize, and three years later he was appointed academician of the Far de Sant Cristòfor. His style, centred on a graceful, stylised female figure, is based on the clear delicacy of the pink and "neoclassical" Picasso, and reveals a certain parallelism with the Italian Novencento, being fully in keeping with the classicist trend that appeared in Western art after the first wave of avant-gardism and of which his friend Cocteau was the driving force. Pruna focused on portraiture and above all on the female figure, capturing images marked by great delicacy and sober distinction. His representations are characterised by a stylised, diaphanous line, and are in tune with the return to order that followed the rupture that Cubism represented in France, thus linking directly with the avant-garde. Pere Pruna is currently represented in the Museum of Montserrat, where there is a space bearing his name, the MACBA in Barcelona and the Maricel Museum in Sitges, among others.