Pierre Daura
Encyclopedia
Pedro Francisco Daura y Garcia (February 21, 1896 – January 1, 1976) was born on Minorca, Balearic Islands, Spain, a few days before his parents returned to their home in Barcelona and registered his birth there as February 21, 1896. In Paris, in 1914, his French identity papers were issued with Pierre as his given name, and that is how he is usually known; however, he is known as Pere where Catalan is spoken.
Daura's father, Juan Daura y Sendra, was a musician in the Barcelona Liceo Orchestra and a textile merchant. His godfather was the famed cellist Pablo Casals
. His mother, Rosa de Lima Garcia y Martinez, died when he was seven. He and two younger siblings, Ricardo and Mercedes, were raised by their father, who never remarried.
Daura received his art education at the Academy of Fine Arts in Barcelona, known as "La Llotja". His teachers included José Ruiz y Blasco
(Pablo Picasso
's father) and Joseph Calvo. Whilst at La Llotja he also worked for the stage deisgner Joaquim Jimenez y Sola. At age fourteen, with his young friends Emilio Bosch-Roger and Vidal Salichs, he set up a studio and sold his first painting at his inaugural exhibition to the Catalan artist and collector Pascual Monturiol, who said it reminded him of Paul Cézanne
's work. In 1914, Calvo urged Daura to go to Paris to pursue his art career. He arrived there in the early summer that year and first worked in the studio of Émile Bernard
, with whom he was friends for many years. Later, he studied engraving under André Lambert.
From 1917 to 1920, Daura served his three years of compulsory Spanish military service on Minorca and then returned to Paris In 1923, whilst painting a mural in Normandy, the scaffolding collapsed. He was badly injured, and his left hand became permanently useless because of nerve damage. From 1925 to 1927, Daura and Gustavo Cochet
, an Argentine artist, designed and made batik material for couturiers, until fire destroyed their studio and business.
In the 1920s Daura frequently exhibited with the group Agrupacio d'Artistes Catalans, usually in Barcelona. In 1922 and 1926 he exhibited at the Salon d'Automne
in Paris, but in 1928 he joined four others rejected by the Salon, Joaquín Torres García
, Jean Hélion
, Ernest Engel-Rozier, and Alfred Aberdam
, held a critically acclaimed exhibition at Gallery Marck: Cinq Peintres Refusés par le Jury du Salon. Daura had met Torres-Garcia in 1925, encouraged him to move to Paris, and arranged for Torres-Garcia's first show there, at Gallery A.G. Fabre in 1926.
In 1927, Daura met Louise Heron Blair of Richmond, Virginia, who was studying art in Paris, and they married in 1928. Several years later Louise's sister married Hélion.
In 1929–30, Daura joined Michel Seuphor and Torres-Garcia in organizing the group Cercle et Carré (Circle and Square), which promoted geometric construction and abstraction in opposition to Surrealism
. Cercle et Carré included Jean Arp
, Wassily Kandinsky
, Fernand Léger
, Piet Mondrian
, Antoine Pevsner
, Kurt Schwitters
, Joseph Stella
, Georges Vantongerloo
, and others.
Daura designed the group's logo, which appeared on stationary, posters, and the three issues of a review; Torres-Garcia also used it later for his Círculo y Cuadrado (a name that also translates as Circle and Square) group in Uruguay. The only Cercle et Carré exhibition was held at Gallery 23, in Paris in April 1930. Virtually ignored by the French press at the time, Cercle et Carré is now considered of great importance in the history of modern art.
The Dauras visited the medieval cliffside village of Saint-Cirq-Lapopie
, France, whilst on their honeymoon in 1929. Daura had sketched in the village in 1914 and had admired the terracotta-roofed houses clustered around the towering church. One particular thirteenth-century house, although in bad condition, had especially intrigued him, and in 1929 he and Louise purchased it. They moved to St. Cirq in May 1930 and began the house restoration project that continued for most of their lives. Their only child, Martha, was born September 24, 1930.
Daura won the St. Cecilia prize (4,000 pesetas) at a painting competition at the Monastery of Montserrat (Santa Maria de Montserrat
, Catalonia, Spain), in 1931, and used the money for a painting trip to Deya (Deià), Mallorca, during the winter of 1931/32.
Daura exhibited frequently in the years prior to the Spanish Civil War
, with solo exhibitions in Paris at Gallery René Zivy in 1928, in Barcelona at Gallery Badrinas in 1929 and 1931, at Gallery Syra 1932 and 1933, and at Gallery Barcino in 1935.
Daura, with his family, made his first trip to the United States in 1934–35, where he and Martha met Louise's family. Many Virginia landscapes he painted during this period were sold at the Gallery Barcino exhibition in Barcelona.
In February 1937, at the age of forty-one, Daura joined the Republican militia to fight against General Francisco Franco's forces. He was forward artillery observer and was seriously wounded on the Teruel Front in August 1937. Sent home to France to convalesce, Daura was given a medical discharge. Because he refused to return to Spain after the war, his Spanish citizenship (and Martha's) was revoked by the Franco government, which emerged victorious.
Louise became seriously ill, and in early July 1939 the family made an emergency medical trip to Virginia. She recovered, but World War II
prevented their return to France. They established permanent residence in Virginia, and Pierre and Martha became naturalized U.S. citizens in 1943. Following the war, the family returned to their home in St. Cirq most summers.
Rockbridge Baths, Virginia
is a small village in the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains, near Lexington, named after the warm springs once used as a spa there. Louise's mother gave her property there, including the springs, and the Dauras used a modest building on the land as a vacation home beginning with their first visit to Virginia in 1934–35. They also lived at the baths after they came to Virginia in July 1939 until early 1942, when they moved as caretakers to "Tuckaway", an historic property in Rockbridge County near Lexington. In the late summer of 1945 they moved to Lynchburg, Virginia, where Daura was chairman of the art department at Lynchburg College
for the 1945–46 academic year. He taught studio art at Randolph-Macon Woman's College from 1946 to 1953, then returned to painting and sculpture full time.
In 1959 the Dauras built a contemporary house beside the springs at Rockbridge Baths where they lived the rest of their lives. Louise died November 10, 1972, and Pierre on January 1, 1976. They are both buried in the cemetery of Bethesda Presbyterian Church in Rockbridge Baths.
In the later years of his life, Daura said, "All I have ever wanted to do is to find a way to paint. I have painted. I have worked. I have given myself to my art. That is what I have wanted since my very early age... to be an artist, good or bad... that is what I am." His prolific output of works in many media attest to his lifelong commitment to his art.
Although the main body of Daura's work was strongly rooted in representation and the celebration of nature, he returned to abstract themes throughout his life. He is included in standard texts on Spanish and Catalan painting and in 33 Pintors Catalans (Barcelona, 1937, reissued 1976) by the art critic Joan Merli. Before the Spanish Civil War, Daura ambitiously pursued an artistic career. Subsequently, he created for his own satisfaction, fulfilled commissions, and sold works to support his family. He did not sell through commercial galleries after leaving Europe in 1939. Rather, he sold from his home of at exhibitions at academic venues and local art clubs. In the opinion of his daughter, Martha, traumatic experiences in the Spanish Civil War, followed by the tragedies of World War II, changed his outlook; personal fame ceased to be important. His work is now included in many private collections, primarily in Barcelona, France and Virginia. Major collections are also held by some forty-eight museums in France, Spain, and the United States.
The medieval Village where Daura passed so much of his life, St. Cirq-Lapopie, is a French historic monument, as is his former home. The Daura property was donated to the French Région Midi-Pyrenées in 2002, and is now used as an artists' colony, "Les Maisons Daura", administered by the Maison des arts Georges Pompidou.
Daura's father, Juan Daura y Sendra, was a musician in the Barcelona Liceo Orchestra and a textile merchant. His godfather was the famed cellist Pablo Casals
Pablo Casals
Pau Casals i Defilló , known during his professional career as Pablo Casals, was a Spanish Catalan cellist and conductor. He is generally regarded as the pre-eminent cellist of the first half of the 20th century, and one of the greatest cellists of all time...
. His mother, Rosa de Lima Garcia y Martinez, died when he was seven. He and two younger siblings, Ricardo and Mercedes, were raised by their father, who never remarried.
Daura received his art education at the Academy of Fine Arts in Barcelona, known as "La Llotja". His teachers included José Ruiz y Blasco
José Ruiz y Blasco
José Ruiz y Blasco was a Spanish painter and art teacher, and the father of artist Pablo Picasso .He was a teacher of drawing at the Escuela Provincial de Bellas Artes in Málaga and a painter specialising in images of doves and pigeons, and gave his son his first art lessons in 1888...
(Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
's father) and Joseph Calvo. Whilst at La Llotja he also worked for the stage deisgner Joaquim Jimenez y Sola. At age fourteen, with his young friends Emilio Bosch-Roger and Vidal Salichs, he set up a studio and sold his first painting at his inaugural exhibition to the Catalan artist and collector Pascual Monturiol, who said it reminded him of Paul Cézanne
Paul Cézanne
Paul Cézanne was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century. Cézanne can be said to form the bridge between late 19th...
's work. In 1914, Calvo urged Daura to go to Paris to pursue his art career. He arrived there in the early summer that year and first worked in the studio of Émile Bernard
Émile Bernard
Émile Henri Bernard is known as a Post-Impressionist painter who had artistic friendships with Van Gogh, Gauguin and Eugene Boch, and at a later time, Cézanne. Most of his notable work was accomplished at a young age, in the years 1886 through 1897. He is also associated with Cloisonnism and...
, with whom he was friends for many years. Later, he studied engraving under André Lambert.
From 1917 to 1920, Daura served his three years of compulsory Spanish military service on Minorca and then returned to Paris In 1923, whilst painting a mural in Normandy, the scaffolding collapsed. He was badly injured, and his left hand became permanently useless because of nerve damage. From 1925 to 1927, Daura and Gustavo Cochet
Gustavo Cochet
Gustavo Cochet was a painter, engraver, and writer who worked in Barcelona and Rosario.- Childhood :Cochet was born in Rosario, Argentina, in 1894. His mother was of mestizo heritage, and his father was French, a teacher in a rural elementary school located between Esperanza and San Jerónimo...
, an Argentine artist, designed and made batik material for couturiers, until fire destroyed their studio and business.
In the 1920s Daura frequently exhibited with the group Agrupacio d'Artistes Catalans, usually in Barcelona. In 1922 and 1926 he exhibited at the Salon d'Automne
Salon d'Automne
In 1903, the first Salon d'Automne was organized by Georges Rouault, André Derain, Henri Matisse, Angele Delasalle and Albert Marquet as a reaction to the conservative policies of the official Paris Salon...
in Paris, but in 1928 he joined four others rejected by the Salon, Joaquín Torres García
Joaquín Torres García
Joaquín Torres García , was a Uruguayan plastic artist and art theorist, also known as the founder of Constructive Universalism...
, Jean Hélion
Jean Hélion
Jean Hélion was a French painter whose abstract work of the 1930s established him as a leading modernist. His midcareer rejection of abstraction was followed by nearly five decades as a figurative painter...
, Ernest Engel-Rozier, and Alfred Aberdam
Alfred Aberdam
-Biography:Born in Lviv in 1894, in 1911 he started to study art at the Munich Academy. During World War I he was imprisoned by the Russians and stayed in the camp for prisoners of war in Siberia. In 1921 in Poland, he began his studies at Kraków's Academy of Fine Arts under Professor Teodora...
, held a critically acclaimed exhibition at Gallery Marck: Cinq Peintres Refusés par le Jury du Salon. Daura had met Torres-Garcia in 1925, encouraged him to move to Paris, and arranged for Torres-Garcia's first show there, at Gallery A.G. Fabre in 1926.
In 1927, Daura met Louise Heron Blair of Richmond, Virginia, who was studying art in Paris, and they married in 1928. Several years later Louise's sister married Hélion.
In 1929–30, Daura joined Michel Seuphor and Torres-Garcia in organizing the group Cercle et Carré (Circle and Square), which promoted geometric construction and abstraction in opposition to Surrealism
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
. Cercle et Carré included Jean Arp
Jean Arp
Jean Arp / Hans Arp was a German-French, or Alsatian, sculptor, painter, poet and abstract artist in other media such as torn and pasted paper....
, Wassily Kandinsky
Wassily Kandinsky
Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky was an influential Russian painter and art theorist. He is credited with painting the first purely-abstract works. Born in Moscow, Kandinsky spent his childhood in Odessa. He enrolled at the University of Moscow, studying law and economics...
, Fernand Léger
Fernand Léger
Joseph Fernand Henri Léger was a French painter, sculptor, and filmmaker. In his early works he created a personal form of Cubism which he gradually modified into a more figurative, populist style...
, Piet Mondrian
Piet Mondrian
Pieter Cornelis "Piet" Mondriaan, after 1906 Mondrian , was a Dutch painter.He was an important contributor to the De Stijl art movement and group, which was founded by Theo van Doesburg. He evolved a non-representational form which he termed Neo-Plasticism...
, Antoine Pevsner
Antoine Pevsner
Antoine Pevsner was a Belarusian and Russian sculptor and the older brother of Alexii Pevsner and Naum Gabo. Both Antoine and Naum are considered pioneers of twentieth-century sculpture.Pevsner was born in Klimavichy, Belarus...
, Kurt Schwitters
Kurt Schwitters
Kurt Hermann Eduard Karl Julius Schwitters was a German painter who was born in Hanover, Germany. Schwitters worked in several genres and media, including Dada, Constructivism, Surrealism, poetry, sound, painting, sculpture, graphic design, typography and what came to be known as...
, Joseph Stella
Joseph Stella
Joseph Stella was an Italian-born, American Futurist painter best known for his depictions of industrial America. He is associated with the American Precisionism movement of the 1910s-1940s....
, Georges Vantongerloo
Georges Vantongerloo
Georges Vantongerloo was a Belgian abstract sculptor and painter and founding member of the De Stijl group.-Life:...
, and others.
Daura designed the group's logo, which appeared on stationary, posters, and the three issues of a review; Torres-Garcia also used it later for his Círculo y Cuadrado (a name that also translates as Circle and Square) group in Uruguay. The only Cercle et Carré exhibition was held at Gallery 23, in Paris in April 1930. Virtually ignored by the French press at the time, Cercle et Carré is now considered of great importance in the history of modern art.
The Dauras visited the medieval cliffside village of Saint-Cirq-Lapopie
Saint-Cirq-Lapopie
Saint-Cirq-Lapopie is a commune in the Lot department in south-western France. It is a member of the Les Plus Beaux Villages de France association ....
, France, whilst on their honeymoon in 1929. Daura had sketched in the village in 1914 and had admired the terracotta-roofed houses clustered around the towering church. One particular thirteenth-century house, although in bad condition, had especially intrigued him, and in 1929 he and Louise purchased it. They moved to St. Cirq in May 1930 and began the house restoration project that continued for most of their lives. Their only child, Martha, was born September 24, 1930.
Daura won the St. Cecilia prize (4,000 pesetas) at a painting competition at the Monastery of Montserrat (Santa Maria de Montserrat
Santa Maria de Montserrat
Santa Maria de Montserrat is a Benedictine abbey located on the mountain of Montserrat, in Monistrol de Montserrat, in Catalonia, Spain.It hosts the Virgin of Montserrat, and the Publicacions de l'Abadia de Montserrat, a publishing house, one of the oldest presses in the world still running, with...
, Catalonia, Spain), in 1931, and used the money for a painting trip to Deya (Deià), Mallorca, during the winter of 1931/32.
Daura exhibited frequently in the years prior to the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
, with solo exhibitions in Paris at Gallery René Zivy in 1928, in Barcelona at Gallery Badrinas in 1929 and 1931, at Gallery Syra 1932 and 1933, and at Gallery Barcino in 1935.
Daura, with his family, made his first trip to the United States in 1934–35, where he and Martha met Louise's family. Many Virginia landscapes he painted during this period were sold at the Gallery Barcino exhibition in Barcelona.
In February 1937, at the age of forty-one, Daura joined the Republican militia to fight against General Francisco Franco's forces. He was forward artillery observer and was seriously wounded on the Teruel Front in August 1937. Sent home to France to convalesce, Daura was given a medical discharge. Because he refused to return to Spain after the war, his Spanish citizenship (and Martha's) was revoked by the Franco government, which emerged victorious.
Louise became seriously ill, and in early July 1939 the family made an emergency medical trip to Virginia. She recovered, but World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
prevented their return to France. They established permanent residence in Virginia, and Pierre and Martha became naturalized U.S. citizens in 1943. Following the war, the family returned to their home in St. Cirq most summers.
Rockbridge Baths, Virginia
Rockbridge Baths, Virginia
Rockbridge Baths is an unincorporated community in Rockbridge County, Virginia, United States....
is a small village in the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains, near Lexington, named after the warm springs once used as a spa there. Louise's mother gave her property there, including the springs, and the Dauras used a modest building on the land as a vacation home beginning with their first visit to Virginia in 1934–35. They also lived at the baths after they came to Virginia in July 1939 until early 1942, when they moved as caretakers to "Tuckaway", an historic property in Rockbridge County near Lexington. In the late summer of 1945 they moved to Lynchburg, Virginia, where Daura was chairman of the art department at Lynchburg College
Lynchburg College
Lynchburg College is a private college in Lynchburg, Virginia, USA, related by covenant to the Christian Church with approximately 2,500 undergraduate and graduate students. The Princeton Review lists it as one of the 368 best colleges in the nation...
for the 1945–46 academic year. He taught studio art at Randolph-Macon Woman's College from 1946 to 1953, then returned to painting and sculpture full time.
In 1959 the Dauras built a contemporary house beside the springs at Rockbridge Baths where they lived the rest of their lives. Louise died November 10, 1972, and Pierre on January 1, 1976. They are both buried in the cemetery of Bethesda Presbyterian Church in Rockbridge Baths.
In the later years of his life, Daura said, "All I have ever wanted to do is to find a way to paint. I have painted. I have worked. I have given myself to my art. That is what I have wanted since my very early age... to be an artist, good or bad... that is what I am." His prolific output of works in many media attest to his lifelong commitment to his art.
Although the main body of Daura's work was strongly rooted in representation and the celebration of nature, he returned to abstract themes throughout his life. He is included in standard texts on Spanish and Catalan painting and in 33 Pintors Catalans (Barcelona, 1937, reissued 1976) by the art critic Joan Merli. Before the Spanish Civil War, Daura ambitiously pursued an artistic career. Subsequently, he created for his own satisfaction, fulfilled commissions, and sold works to support his family. He did not sell through commercial galleries after leaving Europe in 1939. Rather, he sold from his home of at exhibitions at academic venues and local art clubs. In the opinion of his daughter, Martha, traumatic experiences in the Spanish Civil War, followed by the tragedies of World War II, changed his outlook; personal fame ceased to be important. His work is now included in many private collections, primarily in Barcelona, France and Virginia. Major collections are also held by some forty-eight museums in France, Spain, and the United States.
The medieval Village where Daura passed so much of his life, St. Cirq-Lapopie, is a French historic monument, as is his former home. The Daura property was donated to the French Région Midi-Pyrenées in 2002, and is now used as an artists' colony, "Les Maisons Daura", administered by the Maison des arts Georges Pompidou.