Work on deposit at the Museum of Fine Arts of Valencia

Josep de Togores (1893-1970) was a Catalan painter whose career spanned from to , by way of and surrealism. He made a name for himself thanks to his ability to assimilate and adapt the art movements of his time to his own individual vision, a natural quality further enabled by his numerous trips to Paris from a young age. One of his most iconic works, Le gosse, which he painted in Paris in 1921, clearly resonates with Neue Sachlichkeit or New Objectivity, one of the new movements that arose in Germany in the first quarter of the twentieth century, grounded in a more realist and objective representation of reality, and often seen as a reaction to the excesses of expressionism.

Togores’s contact with other avant-garde painters and his membership of (an artist group founded in Barcelona in 1918) gave him an opportunity to acquaint himself first-hand with Picasso’s production at the time, marked by a return to . The influence this exerted over him, together with a visit to Picasso’s mother’s house in Malaga, led him to abandon the Cézanne-esque expressionism of his works between 1916 and 1917 in order to explore in greater depth a sophisticated interpretation of . Between 1917 and 1920, Togores made a series of drawings that greatly impressed Eugenio d’Ors which would eventually be exhibited in Barcelona years later.

After returning to Paris in 1919, he created several works based on the afore-mentioned drawings that would catch the attention of Max Jacob, who then introduced Togores to Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, one of the most notable dealers of early-twentieth century avant-garde art, who subsequently signed the Catalan painter onto his roster.

Kahnweiler, together with Alfred Flechtheim, Germany’s leading modern art dealer in the 1920s, played a critical role in promoting Togores’s works in Germany. Thanks to Flechtheim, who had galleries in Berlin, Düsseldorf, Cologne, Frankfurt and Vienna, Togores enjoyed considerable success in Central Europe. Le gosse, which was possibly exhibited by Flechtheim, is one of Togores’s first paintings made in Paris.

It is quite likely that the most direct reference for the work at hand is the portrait of Manuel de Togores, a pencil drawing from 1918 which is now part of the collection of Museu d’Art de Cerdanyola. Likewise, there is also a pencil drawing of Le gosse (French for child or boy) made that same year in Barcelona and subsequently published in 1919 in the Almanac of La Revista along with drawings by other artists including Joaquim Sunyer, Mariano Fortuny, Joan Miró, Arístides Maillol, Ricard Canals, Isidre Nonell and Ramón Martí i Alsina. Along the same lines is a portrait of the artist’s cousin Alejo de Togores—painted, like Le gosse, in Paris though a year earlier, in 1920—which is part of the A.C.A.C. Banco Santander, S.A. Collection housed at Museo Patio Herreriano in Valladolid.

The work, remarkable for its effective three-dimensional depiciton of the human figure, uncannily foreshadows the key tenets of the German New Objectivity movement (when one bears in mind that the drawing dates from 1918), although filtered through the optic of . The work dates from a brief albeit significant period in the artist’s production (arguably one of the defining moments in his career), characterized by a palette of muted and even gloomy tones and heightened expressiveness.

In an interview from 1926 with the art critic and journalist Sebastià Gasch, later published in the La Publicitat newspaper, Togores said: “I wished to paint beautifully, in a way that is profoundly human; I wanted to combine modern discoveries into something solid and reliable that would not disappoint; I wanted my art, in its simplicity and clarity, to be able to please both children and intellectuals.” This quote reveals the artist’s desire to blend modernism with the human essence in art, a longing clearly fulfilled in this work.