20^th Century Spanish
 
This Catalan painter and stage designer inherited his taste and talent in the making of mural decoration and stage sets from his mother’s family.

Cabanes demonstrated his aptitude from a very early age, and after training in Manresa and Barcelona, he began to work at the workshop of the great set and interior designer and decorator Salvador Alarma, with whom he formed a partnership in 1939. Two years later, on the death of his partner and maestro, the Liceo opera house offered him a chance to run its workshop, up to then directed by the mythical stage designer Maurici Vilomara. Cabanes worked at the Liceo from 1941 through 1956. In that period he created the set designs for Aida (1945), which contributed significant advances in the field of perspective; and also for Tristan and Isolde (1956). It was around this time that he also took up painting and began to show them in exhibitions. He was eventually appointed Professor of Perspective at the Sant Jordi School in Barcelona.

The reach of his practice was not limited to Spain. Indeed, he worked in Mexico, New York, Buenos Aires and Canada creating oils on canvas, watercolours, mural paintings, graphic designs, altarpieces and decorations.

He set up the Fundación Mestres Cabanes in his hometown, which he chaired until the day of his death. Among other distinctions, he won the Gold Medal of the Society of the Gran Teatro del Liceo, the Gold Poster from the Liceo Consortium, and the City of Manresa Gold Medal.

To commemorate his centenary in 1998, the Fundación Mestres Cabanes organised a retrospective show of his paintings and stage designs which included over three hundred works.