D0778

The lovers

Ref Num.: D0778

Date: c. 1929-1930

Typology: Drawing

Technique: Charcoal, graphite pencil, pen and blue ink on tracing paper glued onto wood fibreboard coated with white casein paint

Dimensions: 92.5 x 102.5 cm

Signed: Unsigned and undated

Private collection

A young couple in a playful pose in the purest art déco style. Preparatory sketch for the murals in the dining room at the Crespo family’s home, at the foot on Montjuïc in Barcelona. Between 1929 and 1930, Nogués painted the murals at the home of the artist Ricard Crespo as a token of friendship. Although they were minor works, as was customary, Nogués produced a series of painstaking preparatory drawings for the motifs that decorated the walls. These murals reveal the influence of art déco, which was very much in vogue at the time.

Six of these drawings remained under the ownership of the Crespo family. In 1950, Ramon Gudiol restored them and glued them onto a wooden backing so that they could be transported without suffering any damage. Gudiol was also in charge of removing the murals that Ricard Crespo’s widow, Conxa, took with her when she went to live in Mexico with her daughters. The ten murals were brought back from Mexico in 1978 and sold at the Sala Parés. The drawings were first exhibited at the Sala d’Art Artur Ramon where they were sold to anonymous buyers.

Barcelona, Crespo house

Cecília Vidal Maynou, L’art de Xavier Nogués, catalogue for the exhibition at the Sala d’Art Artur Ramon, Barcelona, March-April 1994, cat. 9, p. 29.