The painter was born in Cerdanyola del Vallès, and on a scholarship from Barcelona City Council in 1907, he went to Paris, where became acquainted with the work of modernism. Due to various historical events and his own personality, Togores was influenced by different styles throughout his life, from the influence of Cézanne on his early painting in Paris, hard realism, cubism, the recovery of classicism, surrealism and a return to figuration. In 1932, on returning to Barcelona, he changed dealers and began a relationship with Francesc Cambó, who took him under his wing, and he became the fashionable portrait artist of Catalan high society. This portrait is painted from life, with a strong pictorial charge and chromatic contrast, mainly due to the red background in the academic tradition and the contrast of intense black with the white of the mother and daughter’s clothes. The significance of painting one figure light and the other dark is a very powerful universal graphic means of expression. The arrangement of motherhood depicted in the piece, in the classical manner, does not impede a directness and a vibrant and modern force of the brush, which is resolved with a particular roughness that cannot leave the eye indifferent.

Year 1954

Oil on canvas

73x60 cm

Josep Togores, 1893 - 1970