Gimeno, Francesc

Francesc Gimeno Arasa (Tortosa, 1858 - Barcelona, 1927)

Catalan painter and draftsman. Rough character and away from the artistic circles of his time, he developed his own realistic style, characterized by decisive and forceful strokes.

In his artistic production, his self-portraits stand out above all, approximately two hundred, which place him in a place of honor in the history of the genre along with Rembrandt and Van Gogh. Unlike what happens with Rembrandt and Van Gogh, Gimeno's self-portraits do not present continuity with the rest of the artist's works; they depart strongly from portraits and landscapes, constituting an autonomous and dramatic series. Art historian Francesc Miralles, a great defender of this facet of Gimeno's work, writes: "Gimeno's self-portraits have no points of contact with the portraits he made of the family: between them there is the difference between the unbreakable strength of spirit, the strength of inner conviction and the irremediable acceptance of the daily circumstances that offer no other possibility than that of abandoning oneself physically". Landscapes and portraits of people around him also stand out.

Gimeno always painted what he had around him: his relatives, the streets he passed through (including the suburbs), some chickens, a homemade still life, his own face, etc. This thematic choice turns his work into a social chronicle of the most disadvantaged strata of Catalonia in the early twentieth century. In this sense, Gimeno is the antithesis of Ramón Casas, chronicler of the Barcelona bourgeoisie.

In 2006, the National Art Museum of Catalonia organized a major exhibition entitled "Francesc Gimeno, a cursed artist". The MNAC, the Museum of Montserrat and the Prado Museum in Madrid, among others, present his work.