The Museu Carmen Thyssen Andorra propose you a new guided visit of our exhibition “INFLUENCERS in art. From Van Goyen to Pop *Art”.
Today we invite you to discover “Two girls in the light of a lantern” by the artist Lluís Graner i Arrufí, from the Colección Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza and you can listen it from home!
The Catalan realistic artist, entered at the Escola de la Llotja in 1883 where he was Antoni Caba’s student who teach him the realism of the figures and the use of the colours in the compositions, and Benet Mercadé at the drawing. With his studies, he gets a scholarship to go to Madrid where he studied and copy the grandmasters of the Museo del Prado, all this influences will always takes part of the Graner’s artworks.
After this experience, he decides to realise a travel to Paris where he was surrounded of all the novelties and new artistic currents of the big capital. This travel opened him the doors to realise exhibitions all over the world and started to create a personal and only style portraying the most disadvantaged persons or with elements of social critic, applying the chiaroscuro technical, with intense light contrasts. In this way, his realism became, very often, to the tenebrism, especially in nocturnal ambients where Goya’s influence is palpable.
Lluís Graner decided to leave the painting to create his own company, a room of shows named Sala Mercè, located at the Rambla (Barcelona) and inaugurated the November 3th, 1904. Graner could have the help of his very good friend Antoni Gaudí, who designed and decorate the room under the concept of “room of integral art” with trends Gesamtkunstwerk. The Sala Mercè was a premises theater and cinema that incorporated the cinematògraf, so popular in the United States. Unfortunately, Granary had to close the room for economic reasons.
His role, both in art and the cinema, has been an important part until the day of today.
