Characters Coming Out of the Clouds, 1974 by Eugenio Fernández Granell

Provenance:
Galerie Manfred, Ontario
Private Collection, Ontario

Exhibited:
E.F. Granell Paintings and Drawings", Galerie Manfred, Dundas, 15 October-11 November 1977"

Literature:
"E.F. Granell Paintings and Drawings", Dundas, 1977, unpaginated, reproduced

Born in the Corunna region of Spain in 1912, Eugenio Granell went into exile from his homeland due to his political associations during the Spanish Civil War. As a writer, political activist and musician, his exile included a significant extended period in the Dominican Republic starting in 1940.

In the Dominican Republic, Granell initially worked as a violinist in the National Symphony Orchestra. A year later, inspired by Surrealism, he began taking up painting. His friendships with Wifredo Lam and Joaquín Torres-Garcia greatly influenced his work, leading him to use bright colours and indigenous symbols of the Americas as his subject matter. In 1943, he held his first solo exhibition of forty- four Surrealist works at the National Gallery of Fine Arts in San Domingo—the first exhibition of its kind in the country.

When André Breton arrived on the island for a short visit, Granell interviewed him for a newspaper. Breton viewed Granell’s work and encouraged him to continue. He praised Granell as one of the painters reinventing Surrealism in the tropics. In 1947, Marcel Duchamp and André Breton invited Granell to participate in a group exhibition at the Maeght Gallery in Paris, which solidified his association with the Surrealist movement.

In the catalogue accompanying the exhibition "E.F. Granell Paintings and Drawings" at Galerie Manfred, where "Characters Coming Out of the Clouds" was featured, French Surrealist Benjamin Péret, a close friend of Granell, describes the artist’s figures: “The beings which he presents seem to have appeared from a yet undiscovered world. His forms, can it be that they are from another age, from a distant resting place towards which he leads us?”