EMILIO GRAU SALA (Barcelona, 1911 - Paris, 1975). "Hyde Park. London, 1957. Watercolour and ink on paper. Signed, dated and located in the lower left corner. Size: 49 x 64 cm; 89 x 103 cm (frame). Grau Sala was always an avid observer of types and customs. Here he gives us a spontaneous vision of a corner of Hyde Park. He brings together prototypical characters: a gentleman in a top hat and pipe strolling with a haughty pose, three members of the Welsh Guards, a couple in love lying on the grass, an ice-cream seller, young girls with smiling faces... His quick, lively brushstrokes convey a momentary impression of the joy of everyday life. Son of the draughtsman Juan Grau Miró, Grau Sala combined his attendance at the School of Fine Arts in Barcelona with an essentially self-taught training. In 1930 he held his first exhibition at the Badriñas gallery in Barcelona. At the outbreak of the Civil War, in 1936, he moved to Paris, where he settled in the Montparnasse colony of Spanish artists. That same year he was awarded the first Carnegie Prize. During the twenty-five years he spent there he became closely acquainted with the avant-garde, although he always favoured a colourist figuration derived from Impressionism and Fauvism. It was a path already taken by the commercial circuit, surpassed in terms of novelty by Cubism and Surrealism, but which was kept alive at a high level thanks to masters such as Bonnard, Chagall and Dufy. In fact, he soon became known in Paris as the successor to the Impressionist spirit and values, directly related to Bonnard and Vuillard. This stylistic choice of Grau Sala s conditioned that of his wife, Ángeles Santos, who abandoned her singular surrealism for a more conventional landscape, a decision that critics did not hesitate to regret. The success of his style led Grau Sala to devote himself also to graphic work (engravings, lithographs, illustrations for novels, posters, etc.), as well as theatre sets. Works by Emilio Grau Sala are kept in the Museo Nacional de Arte de Cataluña, the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Esteban Vicente and the Instituto Óscar Domínguez de Arte y Cultura Contemporánea.