JOAQUÍN MIR TRINXET (Barcelona, 1873 - 1940). Untitled. Oil on tablex Signed in the lower right corner. Size: 25.5 x 32 cm; 46.5 x 53 cm (frame). Joaquim Mir studied at the School of Fine Arts of San Jordi in Barcelona and in the workshop of the painter Luis Graner. His style was also influenced by the School of Olot, his father s home town. He soon felt uncomfortable with the official teaching, which was anchored in a conception of realist painting, and so in 1893 he founded the "Colla del Safrà" with other colleagues (Nonell, Canals, Pichot, Vallmitjana and Gual) to explore together the pictorial initiatives of the end of the century. In 1896 they even participated as a group in the 3rd Exhibition of Fine Arts and Artistic Industries, to which Mir presented two works that give us a clear idea of the group s ideals: "La huerta del rector" ("The Rector s Vegetable Garden") and "El vendedor de naranjas" ("The Orange Seller"). Also, from 1897 he frequented the artistic environment of "Els Quatre Gats", where all the artists who were familiar with the European avant-garde gathered, which helped him to mature in the compositional study of landscapes with figures in different planes of depth. From this period are "Slopes of Montjuic" (1897) and "The Cathedral of the Poor" (1898), the two masterpieces of his youth. During these years he took part in the Fine Arts Exhibitions in Barcelona in 1894, 1896 and 1898. Winner of a second medal at the Madrid Exhibition of 1899, that same year he moved to the capital with the aim of applying for a scholarship in Rome. When he was unsuccessful, he went with Santiago Rusiñol to Mallorca, a trip that was to be a definitive turning point in his career. Mir was dazzled by the Mallorcan landscape, particularly that of Sa Calobra, which was an inexhaustible source of inspiration for him. From then on the artist deployed a whole combination of impossible colours, the result of his personal interpretation of the island s majestic nature. The brushstrokes grew longer and became stains that almost made objects and spatial references disappear. In 1901 he exhibited the fruit of this first Mallorcan period in a solo exhibition at the Sala Parés in Barcelona, and again won a second medal at the National Exhibition. After a period of illness that forced him to move to Reus, in 1907 he won the first medal at the International Exhibition of Fine Arts in Barcelona. From then on, settled in Camp de Tarragona, he did not move away from the landscape genre, but now it was the villages of the surrounding area that were the protagonists of his painting. Already established as a leading figure on the Catalan scene, he gained definitive national recognition in 1917, when he was awarded the National Prize for Fine Arts. Four years later he married and settled permanently in Vilanova i la Geltrú. His successes followed one after the other, and in 1929 he won the first medal at the International Exhibition in Barcelona. The following year he won the medal of honour at the National Exhibition in Madrid, a prize he had been after since 1922. Although he was mainly a native painter, he held solo and group exhibitions in Washington, Paris, Pittsburgh, New York, Philadelphia, Amsterdam, Buenos Aires and Venice. Mir is today considered the foremost representative of Spanish Post-Impressionist landscape painting. His work can be found in the Museo Nacional de Arte de Cataluña, the Museo del Prado, the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza and the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid, among many others.