Antoni CLAVE

Antoni Clavé – Biography, Original Lithographs, Etchings and Carborundum Prints

Antoni Clavé (Barcelona 1913 – Saint-Tropez 2005) was a Catalan painter, printmaker, sculptor and stage designer who spent his entire working life in France. A former cinema-poster painter who crossed the Pyrenees as a refugee in 1939, he became a friend of Picasso, designed one of the most celebrated ballets of the post-war years – Roland Petit’s Carmen, first danced in London – and then turned his back on the theatre to paint. His printed work, some 550 prints according to the Bibliothèque nationale de France, runs from colour lithographs of the 1940s and 1950s to embossed etchings, aquatints and carborundum prints peopled by kings, warriors, gloves and crumpled leaves.

At Le Coin des Arts, Clavé is represented by a unique mixed-media work, Guerrier à la lance (1960), and by prints from every phase of his career: the lithographs Cirque ou La Parade (1949), La Femme-peintre au coq (1951), Mort du Torero (1952), Femme-peintre (1953), Feuille de nuit (1963), Feuille d’automne (1964) and Trobadors (1970); and the intaglio and carborundum prints La Main (1966), Roi Noir and La Feuille (both 1967), Guerrier au fond rouge and Guerrier aux étoiles (both 1970), Gants au collage (1972), Gris, Noir, Blanc, Rouge (1973), La Gloire des Rois (1976), Avec des flèches (1979), an untitled sheet of 1988 and Un altre instrument (1989). Each impression has been chosen for the quality of its printing, its edition, its provenance and its condition.

A house painter’s apprentice in Barcelona

Antoni Clavé i Sanmartí was born in Barcelona on 5 April 1913. He left school early, attended evening classes at the Llotja school of art under Josep Mongrell, and was apprenticed to a house painter, learning distemper, grounds, glues and faux-bois – a craftsman’s feel for surfaces that never left him. A second prize in a poster competition in 1932 led to work for the Cinaes company, painting the giant film posters on the façades of the Catalunya, Capitol and Femina cinemas. He also drew for a children’s magazine and for advertising, and by the mid-1930s was already collaging rope, printed fabric, corrugated card and newspaper. During the Spanish Civil War he served on the Republican side, producing posters and drawings.

Refugee, illustrator and friend of Picasso

Clavé reached France at the end of January 1939 and was interned first at Prats-de-Mollo, then at the Haras camp in Perpignan, where he made the portraits and drawings he exhibited on his release. By the spring he was in Paris, earning a living drawing comic strips for children’s papers. His first solo show was held in 1940 at the bookshop Au Sans Pareil. In 1941 he took a studio in Montparnasse and painted intimate interiors in the spirit of Bonnard and Vuillard; in 1943 he lithographed Mérimée’s Lettres d’Espagne. In 1944 Picasso came to see his exhibition – the start of a lasting friendship and the source of Clavé’s kings, harlequins and children.

Clavé and the London stage

Britain played a decisive part in Clavé’s reputation as a designer. After Los Caprichos for the Ballets des Champs-Élysées in Paris (1946), he designed the sets and costumes for Roland Petit’s Carmen, premiered by Les Ballets de Paris at the Prince’s Theatre, London, on 21 February 1949, with Renée (Zizi) Jeanmaire in the title role. The Victoria and Albert Museum holds one of Jeanmaire’s costumes from the production, made by Barbara Karinska to Clavé’s design. The following year Petit and Clavé returned for Ballabile, created by the Sadler’s Wells Ballet at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, on 5 May 1950, to music by Chabrier arranged by Constant Lambert; The Spectator singled out his ‘superb sets’. London galleries followed: an exhibition at the Anglo-French Art Centre in 1947, then solo shows at Arthur Tooth & Sons in 1955 and 1958. British public collections followed suit: Tate holds Child with a Water-Melon (c.1947–8), and the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge bought a colour lithograph, Composition, in 1964. Other designs included Lorca’s La Maison de Bernarda Alba in Paris (1951), Ruth Page’s Revenge (1951) and the costumes for Samuel Goldwyn’s film Hans Christian Andersen (1952), which earned him two Academy Award nominations.

Books, prizes and the turn to painting

Alongside the theatre Clavé illustrated fine books: Pushkin’s La Dame de pique and Mérimée’s Carmen (1946), Voltaire’s Candide (1948) and, above all, Rabelais’s Gargantua, begun in 1950 and published in 1955 by Les Bibliophiles de Provence with 61 original colour lithographs. From it came the kings of cards, medieval figures and warriors of his later work. In 1954 he gave up stage design to paint full time. Recognition followed quickly: the UNESCO prize for printmaking at the 28th Venice Biennale in 1956, the Matarazzo painting prize at the 4th São Paulo Biennial in 1957 (where Ben Nicholson took the prize for Great Britain), and the Kamakura Museum prize at the Tokyo print biennial in 1958.

Saint-Tropez and the later years

In the late 1950s Clavé began designing carpets, then from 1960 assemblages and totemic sculptures in wood and lead. In 1965 he settled near Saint-Tropez, setting up a studio devoted solely to printmaking. Major museum exhibitions followed: ‘En marge de la peinture’ at the Centre Pompidou and a retrospective at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 1978, and the whole of the Spanish pavilion at the 1984 Venice Biennale. He died in Saint-Tropez at the end of August 2005, aged 92. In 2018 the BnF in Paris showed his prints after his grandchildren gave it 92 impressions.

Clavé the printmaker: lithography, intaglio and carborundum

Clavé’s first major body of prints is in lithography, much of it worked at Edmond Desjobert’s studio in Paris; colour lithographs such as Cirque ou La Parade (1949) and La Femme-peintre au coq (1951) were published by La Guilde de la Gravure (Paris-Geneva). In the mid-1960s he abandoned the stone for intaglio – etching and aquatint – and in 1968 discovered carborundum, the technique developed by Henri Goetz. Carborundum gave him relief, deep blacks and the possibility of taking impressions of real objects; he collaged fabric, card, rope and keys into his plates, later nails, drawing pins, screws and staples, and used blind embossing until the late 1990s.

Three catalogues raisonnés are used by the trade: Roger Passeron, Antoni Clavé. L’œuvre gravé 1939-1976 (Office du Livre, 1977); the Sala Gaspar catalogue of the Obra gráfica 1957-1983 (Barcelona); and the definitive Antoni Clavé. Printed Work by Tomàs Llorens, Céline Chicha-Castex and Aude Hendgen (Skira, 2017, trilingual), which updates both and includes the illustrated books. A reference such as ‘Passeron 264’ – cited for Guerrier aux étoiles (1970) – gives the print’s number in the 1977 catalogue; prints made after 1976 are referenced to Sala Gaspar or Skira.

Collecting Antoni Clavé’s prints: a buyer’s guide

Edition. Edition sizes vary: La Femme-peintre au coq was printed in 200, Guerrier aux étoiles in 80. Artist’s proofs (‘EA’) and impressions numbered in Roman numerals also exist. See the printing.

Signature. Original impressions are signed in pencil by Clavé; a signature in the plate alone does not make a signed print. See the signature.

Paper and margins. Carborundum prints are pulled on heavy paper to take the relief: a flattened surface or trimmed margins reduce value considerably.

Catalogue reference. Ask for the Passeron, Sala Gaspar or Skira number and check the dimensions and colours against it.

Condition. Collaged elements and embossing are fragile, and older sheets may show foxing or light toning. A deep window mount that protects the relief is essential – see our framing page.

Pitfalls. Beware of exhibition posters (Galerie Beyeler, Sala Gaspar and others) offered as original lithographs, of plates removed from books and sold as separate prints, and of unsigned reproductions. Our authenticity page explains our guarantees.

Le Coin des Arts selects Antoni Clavé’s prints for the quality of their impression and their condition. His work sits naturally beside that of Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, Antoni Tàpies, Eduardo Chillida and Bernard Buffet. See also modern art and illustrated books.

Sources and further reading

Roger Passeron, Antoni Clavé. L’œuvre gravé 1939-1976, Office du Livre, 1977 · Tomàs Llorens, Céline Chicha-Castex, Aude Hendgen, Antoni Clavé. Printed Work, Skira, 2017 · Antoni Clavé: Recent Paintings, Arthur Tooth & Sons, London, 1955 · V&A – Costume for Carmen (1949) · Tate – Antoni Clavé · Royal Opera House Collections – Ballabile · BnF – Antoni Clavé. Estampes (2018)