Agudo Clará

Agudo Clará, Ignacio (Zaragoza 1880 – Ibiza 1966) ARTS On May 25, 1936, he married the painter Pura Ortí and with her and her family, he moved to Ibiza, facing the imminent Civil War. Settled in a house in Dalt Vila, he began to teach drawing and painting classes at the School of Arts and Crafts, and it was then that he decided to study Fine Arts, which he would do in Valencia in the 1940s. A little later, he decided to open his house-studio in Dalt Vila to the public, a circumstance that led him to request early retirement from the School of Arts and Crafts, and to dedicate himself entirely to his profession as a painter. As a figurative painter, he cultivated landscape and portrait, greatly influenced by German Romanticism, especially in the former. He gave great importance to drawing and composition technically, issues derived from his fidelity to the academic training he had received. He always used oil on canvas or on wood or cardboard. Fond of small formats and description, his painting is full of details, colorful, and polished in form. His fantastic compositions are curious, where the painter combines a series of dreamlike visions with religious matters, historical themes, or legends. His work was exhibited in various galleries and museums around the world. Although most of Laureà Barrau's work takes place during the first half of this century, his way of understanding art is more in line with the past century than with the present one. His artistic roots stem from realism and, above all, impressionism. The theme of his works aims to attract an audience that saw art as an alternative to everyday life, as entertainment. Hence the search for pleasant anecdotes, portraits, genre scenes, or landscapes that suggest adventures or rest. The treatment of light in his works, especially in the case of landscapes, follows the impressionist tradition. The mixture of colors is not done on the palette but by juxtaposing pure color in uneven brushstrokes, in such a way that the form is distorted, but it gives the overall vision more strength and authenticity. His production is very dense. He was an artist who painted a large number of paintings, and for this reason, his production presents diverse quality as well as great dispersion. In June 1985, the Insular Council of Ibiza and Formentera organized an anthological exhibition of the painter that took place at the Sa Nostra Cultural Center in the city of Ibiza.