MAIÀ DE MONTCAL, 1942Cruañas

Impressionist painter with abstract dyes, transmits a special vapor, inside a very humid atmosphere.

BIOGRAPHY

Born in Maià de Montcal, Girona, 1942, at sixteen he attended drawing classes at the School of Art of Banyoles directed by Joan de Palau and at seventeen to the studio of the painter Joan Sibecas in Figueres.

His first individual exhibition took place in 1970. Since then he has made more than two hundred solo and group exhibitions. His work has been seen in different places in Catalonia and the rest of Spain, as well as abroad, in the case of South Africa, Uruguay, Cuba, Malta, the United States, Andorra and France. He has work in several museums and has won outstanding prizes in painting competitions nationwide.

In 1993 the Editorial La Gran Enciclopedia Vasca publishes a monograph on his work, written by Joan Carrera and Elena María Morató. Impressionist painter with abstract dyes, transmits a special vapor, inside a very humid atmosphere. The gesture, the light effect, the density of the palette and the chromatic intensity due to neutral tones and chromatic signs are the main characteristics of his work. The prevailing theme is the landscape, both urban and rural, where several places of Normandy, Paris, Cadaqués, the Empordà, Barcelona, ​​Venice, Amsterdam or New York are appreciated.

JOSEP CRUAÑAS AND HIS INSISTENT NOVELTY

by Josep M. Cadena

Josep Cruañas has a volcanic nature, which surrounds with the vaporousness of his paintings, many of which have water as the main protagonist. Although he followed regulated teachings to better guide his innate plastic vocation and had the green GEMAT of the Moixina Olotina at his side, he soon found himself on the canals of Amsterdam and those of Venice. He went outside to extract in the most intense way in his interior a reflective and sensitive person, who is very quiet and listens with intensity to the beats of the rain and the rumoreig of the countryside, in many occasions similar to that of the waves.

In relation to Josep Cruañas and his work, I must make a personal confession. When a person like me, who has spent years and years dedicated to art criticism in Catalonia and knows by trade that exposes a creative that you already know and even admire, it is natural that in certain occasions a supplementary effort is imposed when the occasion to discuss the exhibition that he performs or to present any activity related to him. He is comfortable, but there is the challenge of overcoming what has already been said about him before, in order to avoid the possible topic or repetition. Well, as for Cruañas, about which I have written seventeen times since 1985, it always seems to me that I start again. I know that I will meet with him some themes already known in other samples that I have seen before, but I am surprised because I always find that he has put a look, which is never the one that walks through well-known spaces and that are done mechanically . He is, in my opinion and in which they feel, I think, many others who have been following him for a long time, a creative who knows how to find himself and who always finds new qualities in the topics that interest him most. Search and follow until it connects with the mysterious tinkle of the novelty in the environment that you have chosen and that spiritually surrounds it.

Made this confession, daughter of the sincerity with which Cruañas and I have always expressed ourselves in our friendly relations, it must be said that in the present exhibition I am again satisfied with him and with everything he represents. I think he has understood the message of Nature and the will of the being to feel inside, again and again, with what is essential and that is why it never stops being new.

Bibliography: in 1994 “Cruañas” by J. Carreras and Péra & M. Elena Morató was published in the collection “Current Masters of Catalan Painting and Sculpture”.