Joan Marti 1936-2009 | Barcelona, Spain

Joan Marti 1936-2009 | Barcelona, Spain
Marti is one of the most important artists in Spain. Born in Barcelona, he began his artistic studies in 1950. His artistic talent was developed and perfected first at the Academia de Valls and later at the Escuela de Bellas Artes de Sant Jordi in Barcelona. He studied with such renowned teachers as Nolase Valols, E. Santasusagna and Garcia Morales. He held his first exhibition at Galeria Atenea in 1959 in Barcelona. He is one of the official portrait artists of the King of Spain, Juan Carlos I. At the request of the opera singer, Placido Domingo, he painted scenes from Verdi's opera Otello starring Domingo and soprano Katya Riccorelli performing at La Scala in Milan. These accomplishments are the result of a career steeped in devotion to technique and to a unified aesthetic vision. He is a master of all mediums: oils, pastels (which he helped to revive in Spain), charcoal, pen and ink; his skills at rendering the human figure are second to none. In addition to the human figure as subject matter, he loves genre paintings of his native Catalonia, landscapes and seascapes, character studies and still-lifes. He is a studio painter. His paintings are in many private collections throughout Europe, the United States and Japan. Internationally, his work has been shown in Paris, Luxembourg, Caracas, Washington, New York, Brussels, Miami, Quebec, California and of course widely throughout Spain.