The early years

Carlos Nadal Ferreres was born in Paris on 24 April 1917. His parents, of Spanish nationality, lived on Rue des Ecoles near Boulevard Saint Michel in the Quartier Latin, a neighbourhood home to intellectuals, students and artists, located steps from the Seine and Notre Dame Cathedral. The street owes its name to the presence of numerous local schools and universities such as La Sorbonne, the Collège de France and the Lycée Saint Louis. His father Santiago, a soldier in the French army during WWI and owner of a decorative paint workshop, fell ill from the gases used during the war and the entire family returned to Barcelona in the 1920s.

Carlos soon began working as an apprentice with his father, which he combined with art classes at the school on Calle Caspe, helping him to acquire a solid theoretical and practical foundation early in life.

After his father’s death, he had to double his efforts to help support the family along with his mother and two sisters.

In 1936, the Barcelona City Council granted him a scholarship to study fine arts at the Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes de San Jorge, currently the Facultad de Bellas Artes, located at the time in “La Llotja”, a Medieval-style building considered one of the best civil Gothic buildings remaining on the Mediterranean which now houses the headquarters of the Real Academia Catalana de Bellas Artes. Pablo Picasso also attended this school during his time in Barcelona. (See Student notes)

Spain was a country of unrest at the time: the fall of dictator General Primo de Rivera and the departure of King Alfonso XIII in 1930, the arrival of the Second Republic in late 1931, the attempted coup by General Sanjurjo in August 1932, anarchist uprisings in 1933, socialist insurgency in October 1934 in Asturias, the proclamation of the Catalonian State in 1934, a Popular Front government after the elections held in February 1936, violence arising from political polarisation between the revolutionary left and the fascist right…

The Civil War

The tormented political and social life of the Second Republic came to an end on 17 July 1936 with the military uprising led by General Franco, who rapidly extended his control over the south to reach the north-eastern part of the country.

However, the Republican government managed to stay in power in big cities like Madrid and Barcelona, as well as in more industrialised areas, leaving Spain divided with an area controlled by military insurgents.

After the Republican army regrouped, to a certain extent, Carlos Nadal joined and found himself on the fronts in Aragon and Tremp, two of the spots that saw the most fighting during the war.

However, the pressure Nazi Germany exerted on Europe during the second half of the 1930s, along with the appeasement policy, led to the Republican government being abandoned by the democratic European powerhouses in favour of the Nationalists.

In December 1938, with support from the Condor Legion from Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italian air force, General Franco’s troops began a final offensive to take control of Catalonia. On 9 February 1939, Loyalist premier Juan Negrín crossed the French border together with major leaders, and from 5 to 11 February the rest of the Republican army laid down their arms and were interned in improvised camps set up on several French beaches.

Carlos Nadal, located at the rearguard of a defeated Republican army, spent several months registered as prisoner number 5272 at Saint Cyprien concentration camp, which he finally managed to escape on his second attempt. He once again crossed the Spanish border and, without documentation, was arrested by the Guardia Civil in Figueres and then imprisoned.

The post-war years: his studies, first works and exhibitions

The post-war years in Spain were marked by shortages and the Law of Political Responsibilities, a harsh repressive law enacted by the winning side with sentences ranging from imprisonment to the death penalty, forced labour, withholding of funds and confiscation of assets.

Carlos Nadal returned to Barcelona after his release and subsequent probation.

Given certain personal remarks made to the then Civil Governor of Barcelona, Antonio Correa Veglison, it would seem that Carlos Nadal’s participation in the conflict was not considered deserving of a relevant punishment and he managed to overcome the situation without any major upheavals to continue with his studies, although under obvious economic hardship.

He managed to resume his Fine Arts studies thanks to a decree issued by Barcelona City Council on 19 September 1939 agreeing to

“…authorise the enjoyment of the scholarship granted prior to 19 July 1936…”

His academic results from the Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes de San Jorge were excellent and confirmed his solid technical training: subjects like anatomy, landscape, drawing, perspective and colouring were completed with the highest marks.

His talent was also recognised and supported by his teachers and professors.

Thus, his teacher Miguel Farré i Albagés hired him in 1943 to help complete several fresco works, including the Raventós family church in Raimat and the Santa Ana church in Barcelona.

Miguel Farré i Albagés, who was appointed tenured professor of “Artistic procedures and techniques” at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Jorge in 1943, founded the Escuela de Pintura Mural Contemporánea de Sant Cugat in 1959. Farré was a great expert in fresco mural painting, an ancient technique which he managed to use brilliantly in modern compositions such as the church in Raimat or the Hogares Mundet in Barcelona.

Contracted by Manel Raventós to build a winery in the province of Lerida and create a town in an open, free and uninterrupted space, the architect Juan Rubio i Bellver (1871 – 1952), student and collaborator of Gaudí from 1893 to 1906, also designed a church resembling the Catalonian Gothic style: a single nave with lateral buttresses and chapels, with the typically Modernist parabolic arches, albeit simulated by oval arches in this case. That was the birth Raimat, where the church, consecrated in 1922, was built on one side of the hexagonal-shaped town. In 1937 Miguel Farré, with the help of his student Carlos Nadal, completed the fresco paintings in the baptistery which were damaged by the war, and in 1954 those in the church’s apse. In 1999, the Raventós family donated the church to the archdiocese of Lerida. Raimat parish currently belongs to the Order of the Jesuits.

In the 12th century (1141) the church of Saint Anna was founded by a group of Canons of the Holy Sepulchre, who had then arrived in Barcelona, the county capital city of Ramon Berenguer IV, sent by the Patriarch of Jerusalem. Today, next to Plaza Catalunya, Portal del Angel, Las Ramblas and Calle de Santa Ana, this beautiful monument remains hidden like an oasis of peace, art, beauty and prayer.

Contrasting with the city centre’s hustle and bustle, it’s a place of peace and quiet in the heavy heart of Barcelona church. Nowadays, the Order is based in this church and its purpose is to support the apostolic work of the Catholic Church in the Holy Land.

The Santíssimo chapel, located on the right just after the entrance, is reserved for praying and liturgical celebrations. The fresco mural painting was completed by Miguel Farré i Albagés, with help from his then student Carlos Nadal, and represents the adoration of the lamb. The group of sculptures behind the altar are woodcarvings by Josep Llimona (1863-1934), a notable Catalonian sculptor, and date back to the early 20th century. On the right is a niche with the representation of the Dolorosa, a piece by Pere Pruna i Ocerans, and in front is a representation of the Calvary alongside two tombstones, one from 1653 and another from 1663.

Pere Pruna i Ocerans (1904-1977), like Carlos Nadal, also lived in Sitges for years and is one of the great Spanish painters of the 20th century. A friend of Pablo Picasso (he was a witness at his marriage to Henriette Sacher), he regularly frequented the artistic haunts of interwar Paris. Along with his stylised and delicate feminine figures, worthy of the best pink and Neoclassic Picasso, his mural paint works are also worth mentioning; the best known were painted in Montserrat monastery and in the church, known as the “round church”, on Calle Ganduxer in Barcelona.

Carlos Nadal also established a long-lasting friendship with Josep Amat Pages, his landscape professor at the school of Fine Arts. In 1950, his art dealer, Georges Giroux, introduced him and his work to Belgium at his art gallery at Boulevard du Régent, 43 in Brussels, where the works of Josep Amat were exhibited in 1953.

Luis Muntané Muns, his drawing professor, granted him the chance to stage his first individual exhibition after giving the artist a fortnight he had booked from 15 to 28 April 1944 at the Pinacoteca in Barcelona, Paseo de Gracia 34, where he presented five landscapes, three still lifes, eight figures, a sketch and two fresco fragments. (Read his diary notes)

During the Civil War, while retreating from the position at Tremp in late 1938, he was stationed with his company at Pla de Sant Tirs, a town in the high Urgel region on the banks of the Segre River. According to recent stories told by the elderly inhabitants of the town, Carlos Nadal witnessed how the Republicans lit bonfires and ate inside the church, and he promised that if he survived the war he would create a painting for the high alter, which was bare after the Republican soldiers set fire to the baroque altar which had graced the church. It wasn’t until the mid-1940s that he returned to fulfil his promise, spending two summer months in the town. The fresco represents the Virgen del Carmen, with baby Jesus on her lap, and several angels. His sister modelled for him to paint the virgin and one of the angels, a young girl from Pla was the model for the other angel; he also used a small child from Pla to depict baby Jesus, and the alter became:

…the admiration of all the nearby towns in the region and further afield”

as can be read in a thank-you document dated 25 September 1945 and signed by the priest Jose Martell, the Mayor of the town, and by another 14 people.

These facts, gathered in a book published in 2015 on the recent history of Pla de Sant Tirs, undoubtedly constitute much more than a simple anecdote which occurred in hard times.

His departure from Spain: the take off

However, in the mid-1940s his economic and personal situation was quite precarious.

In 1946 he managed to fulfil a long awaited desire: to return to Paris. Thanks to Salvador Millet Maristany, who managed the culture negotiations, on 12 February 1946, Barcelona City Council adopted the following agreement:

“…Agreeing to the request by the artist painter Carlos Nadal Ferreres…for the purpose of moving to Paris to broaden his artistic knowledge for one year …the abovementioned is granted an honorary loan of 5,000 pesetas, the repayment of which is guaranteed by Mr….”.

On 26 February 1946 the General Consul of Spain in France issued him a certificate of nationality and he moved into the Spanish College at Boulevard Jourdan 9 in Paris.

Subsequently, the French state, through the “Comité d’accueilaux étudiants étrangers” under the Ministère des Affaires Etrangères and the Ministère de L’éducation Nationale, granted him a scholarship to continue his studies at the School of Fine Arts. He also frequented the “La Grande Chaumière” academy.

His stay in Paris would be a determining factor in his career and personal life.

It was in Paris where he met Flore Joris, who he married on 1 December 1948, establishing his residence in Brussels, where he lived until the mid-1970s.

It wasn’t until 31 January 1943, while studying fine arts in Barcelona, when Carlos Nadal wrote in his diary that:

“Drawing will be a prisoner of paint and not the other way around”

and his Fauvist artistic style can be explicitly seen for the very first time, a style which he maintained and even radicalised over the years.

Although his academic training took place mainly in Barcelona, it was during his time in France and Belgium that he crystallised his Fauvist essence.

Unlike many other painters captivated by the light of the Mediterranean, Carlos Nadal considered it too strong and one which made colours uniform. As he stated on many occasions, it was in Belgium where he discovered colours in their vast range of shades. As a result, he preferred to paint very early in the morning in his studio in Sitges, and when the sun became too intense he would draw a fine neutral-coloured curtain to filter the light.

Carlos Nadal had already forged the essential parts of his artistic personality by the late 1940s, and without ceasing to research but staying true to his Fauvist universe he exhibited his works in Belgium at the galleries of Georges Giroux (in 1956 he exhibited along with the sculptor Subirachs), Brachot, Louis Manteau, Kintz, Tamara Pfeifer, etc. His several exhibitions at the Sala Gaspar in Barcelona in the 1950s were also wildly successful. The Maragall, along with the Salas Pares and Vayreda in Barcelona and El Cisne in Madrid, would become his art dealers in Spain for over 30 years. He exhibited in France, Germany, Holland, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States and won several awards. He was also invited to exhibit at the Salones de Octubre in Barcelona in 1949 and 1950, at the Royal Academy in London, at the Latin American Art Biennial…

Thanks to the complicity of his wife, sculptor Flore Joris, the English art dealer John Duncalfe undoubtedly played a very special role in the artist’s career in the late 1970s in a relationship marked by passion and friendship.

Carlos Nadal and his family established their definitive residence in Spain in the mid-1970s.

Carlos Nadal Ferreres died on 6 June 1998, at the age of 81.

Decorative arts

His works within the field of decorative arts, which for years managed to give him a stable income, have also been quite significant.

Aside from the knowledge of the trade which he acquired at a young age, he demonstrated a fine mastery of space, volume and lines: basic elements in decoration and architecture, a profession in which he was greatly interested.

He collaborated with the Vanypeco and Plans advertising agencies in Brussels on a number of commercial decoration projects.

His contribution to decorative arts culminated with the Universal Exhibition held in Brussels in 1958, where he designed and completed the decoration of the pavilion dedicated to transport in
the Belgium Congo. An enormous round-shaped fresco occupied an important place above the access to the stairs. He was also responsible for decorating part of the pavilion dedicated to elegance in this same exhibition. With a perspective ranging over 40 years, the elegance and modernity of his designs still catch our attention.

Proof of this is the house-studio, restored in 2007, which was built near Barcelona in 1959; Nadal was actively involved in the design, along with the then young and recently graduated architect José María Feliu. A building with simple functional lines, quite innovative in Spain back in the 1950s, it has a marked rationalist character, midway between the international style and certain designs by Coderch, and two large work spaces: one for him and another for his wife, Flore Joris.

Bibliography (summary)

“Carlos Nadal”, 212 pag., texte préliminaire de Hubert Nyssen.
Edition d’Alain Barthélémy – Avignon, France – 1980
Dépot légal: 2e trimestre 1980
ISBN 2.903044-10-4 / Nº edit. 8011 (Out of print)

“Carlos Nadal”, 183 pag., textes d’Albert Henry, Francis Farmar et Joan Anton Maragall.
Edition d’Alain Barthélémy – Avignon, France – 1986
Dépot légañ: Juin 1986
ISBN 2-903044-33-3 (Out of print)

“Carlos Nadal”, 97 pag., texto de Francis Farmar.
Ediciones Gal Art – Published by Anton J.G. Bilton
Barcelona, Spain – 1994 (Out of print)

“Carlos Nadal, An English Perspective”, 2010, 304 pages, of Illustrated paintings and Chronology, Text by John Duncalfe.
Published by Tillington Press
ISBN 970-0956-7177-0-2
£35 + post UK £5 Europe £10
Order from the Publishers by Paypal www.tillingtonpress.com
email: tillingtonpress@hotmail.co.uk

“Carlos Nadal, Works On Paper,” 2014, 304 pages, of Illustrated Works on Paper and chronology, Text by John Duncalfe and Dr. Hilary Diaper, the University of Leeds.
Published by Tillington Press,
Hard back edition:
ISBN 978-0-9567177-1-9
£35+ Post £5 UK Europe £10.
Soft back edition:
ISBN 978-0-9567177-2-6
£25 +Post UK £5 Europe £10
Order from the Publishers by Paypal www.tillingtonpress.com
email: tillingtonpress@hotmail.co.uk

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Carlos Nadal biography