Antoni Clavé, the man who turned Von Karajan down

My close and long friendship with Antoni Clavé led me to agree to write his memoirs. All this helped me get to know him very well. He was distinguished by his radical artistic honesty. Here are some examples.

During his time as a film poster designer, he had to stand up to the CNT, which ruled the sector at the outbreak of the Civil War. He was summoned to prohibit him from continuing to depict bourgeois protagonists in films on the facade of the Fémina and to force him to fill the space solely with the colors of the anarchist union: red and black intertwined with the diagonal. He argued that the venue would then be empty of spectators. His fellow boss reconsidered and let him continue with his modern realist style.

His artistic honesty was radical: he refused to acknowledge the authorship of a set design that MGM manipulated.

MGM hired him to design part of the set design for the blockbuster Hans Christian Andersen , starring Danny Kaye. The models he submitted were manipulated to suit conventional and popular tastes. He refused to acknowledge authorship.

After creating sets and costumes for Roland Petit and Zizi Jeanmaire's ballet company with such skill that they gained widespread fame, he abandoned a world that distracted him mentally. Years later, his friend Von Karajan commissioned him to design two operas at La Scala, but he declined, even when tempted by a blank check.

He carried out his graphic work with a very personal touch and loved flexing his muscles by operating the printing press he installed in his workshop. He created sculptures of reasonable dimensions by hand. He never gave in to the temptation of ordering a large enlargement of a simple model. He directed and intervened with his brushes in the creation of his gigantic sculptural homage to the 1888 Universal Exposition, located in the Ciutadella.

Read also Antoni Clavé emerges from oblivion 20 years after his death with an exhibition in Barcelona. Alex Tort

When the Civil War broke out, he committed himself to the fight against insurgent fascism: he painted slogans on the sides of a train car and also a poster depicting a grotesque Franco receiving bombs brought by Hitler and Mussolini. When the final defeat came, he did not hesitate to cross to France, with Paris as his desired final objective.

And triumph never made him forget his moral, ethical, and sentimental commitment to his homeland. Thus, in the garden of his house in Saint-Tropez, he kept the Catalan flag flying throughout the Franco dictatorship, and he participated with his paintings in the "We Want the Statute" campaign. The dominant blue and red colors in his work were a nod to the colors of Barça.

Although pressure was placed on him, he managed to resist having an art dealer so as not to be tied to producing and exhibiting if he wasn't sufficiently inspired. Freedom was always paramount to him.

He was a great friend to his friends and, if he could, would help them through difficult times. He was also generous to the institutions of his beloved Barcelona and Catalonia, never forgotten. He donated a collection of his graphic work, a gigantic painting to the City Hall, ballet sets and costumes to the Institut del Teatre, and a selection of paintings to the Generalitat (Catalan government).

If his creative talent was recognized everywhere during his lifetime, the exceptional and moving quality of his humanity deserves to be remembered precisely now that his art can be admired in exhibitions at the Palau Martorell, the Reial Cercle Artístic, and the Joan Gaspar gallery.