CLAVE

ANTON CLAVE
Here are the original prints (lithographs or etchings) by Clave that are presently for sale. Click on the image to enlarge it. Unless otherwise specified all the prints shown on this page are signed by Clavé and are original. Please contact the gallery for prices.

Antoni Clavé was born in Barcelona in 1915. Aged 13, he attended evening classes at the Fine Arts School of his native town. In 1932, he was commissioned by a cinema firm to design his first posters. As from 1935, Clavé incorporated into his publicity and ornamental work avant-garde techniques such as collage of newspaper, cardboard, rope, fabric etc.
Moving to France in 1939, Clavé held his first exhibition of drawings and gouaches in Perpignan. He then settled in Paris where he made his first lithographs. In 1942, he showed at the Cstelucho gallery with Grau Sala and Marti Blas. It was during this period that Clavé illustrated Prosper Merimée's "Lettres d'Espagne" with 27 colour lithographs and the year later illustrated Carmen with lithographs. Clavé met Picasso in 1944, in 1946 the Delpierre gallery in Paris showed his work ; the same year he designed the stage-sets for a ballet production. In the fifties, he illustrated Rabelais' "Gargantua", and started the playing-card series. He was perpetually adding his new findings to his art, which included imprints and various modelled shapes. To his engraving he added the carborundum technique, using 12 carborundum prints to illustrate "La gloire des rois". Among his numerous other book illustrations, Voltaire 's "Candide ou l'optimiste" which he illustrated with 45 lithographs. Antoni Clavé died in 2005.

Antoni Clavé, The graphics works, 1939 - 1976.
It is Roger Passeron who made this catalogue raisonne for the artist Antoni Clavé. Published by Office du Livre in Fribourg and covering the period 1939 - 1976, This catalogue shows more than 350 original prints, lithographs, etchings (some of them with aquatint or carborundum), but also linocuts. The catalogue describes also all the prints made by Clavé for the illustrated books, for example in the most famous of them : "Gargantua".