Antoni Gelabert

Murada i catedral a entrada de fosca

Date: 1903

Technique: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 119 x 173,5 cm

Es Baluard Museu d'Art Contemporani de Palma, Ajuntament de Palma collection long-term loan

Reg. no.: 391

Not on display

A sunset, just like any other. In Palma, the evening light rising from behind the mountains and with the cathedral in the foreground, turns the Seu a golden colour. This painting reveals two significant aspects regarding its origin and period: the urban evolution of the city of Palma based on one of its most significant epicentres – the cathedral – and the advances in experimentation in 19th-century landscape and urban painting, within which Gelabert, close the symbolist patterns of Rusiñol, advanced, integrating the expression and colour palette of the new forms of pictorial experimentation. The painting, with its short, warm brushstrokes, had other versions too, and we are before a Modernist creator who managed to transcend localism in order to contribute a renovation to the landscape painting of his day. The use of reds and the detail of the blazing light of the building in the foreground indicate this. The work was donated to Palma City Council by the artist, in return for the grant for a residency in Paris the council awarded to him in 1903.

N.A./E.B.

Artist biography