Joaquim Claret (camprodón 1879 - Olot 1964), Reclining Nude Woman (1914)

JoaquimCLARET (Camprodón 1879 - Olot 1964)
Reclining nude woman
1914
Black chalk on paper
24.5 x 30 cm
Dedicated,signed and dated: Del Amigo Rouguet / J. Claret / Paris 1-6-1914
Some folds in the paper, small nick top edge

Joaquin Claret was a Spanish Catalan sculptor who was the student and assistant of Maillol (himself a Catalan from the French side of the border), from the early1900s until the outbreak of the First World War. Born in Camprodon in the province of Gerona in 1879, Claret started out as a carver of religious images in wood before attending art school in Olot and then Barcelona. He came to Paris in 1900 and found himself in a modernist milieu collaborating with Maurice Denis and then Maillol. As a talented direct carver in wood and in stone he found himself very useful to other sculptors who did not have the skills or time to carve works themselves (indeed most sculptors at this period worked in plaster and handed the models over to technicians to do the actual carving). Throughout his time with Maillol, Claret exhibited regularly at theSalon, and the Salon d’Automne, maintaining his credentials as an original artist. After ending his long stint with Maillol, he returned home to Catalonia to get married in 1914, but ended up getting trapped in Spain for the duration of the War. Returning to Paris in 1919 he launched his solo career in earnest, and in 1921 a solo exhibition in the Bernheim-Jeune gallery broke his name not only in France but in Britain and America, and he went on to have a distinguished career in France and in Catalonia.