Mediterranean Sea

Joaquim Sunyer’s Mediterranean Sea is one of the founding works of Noucentism in painting. When Sunyer had a solo exhibition in April of 1911 at the Fayans Catala Gallery in Barcelona with a group of sixty works -amongst which the one at hand was a very important work- the new airs introduced by the exhibition arrived at the right time to bring about a transformation in Catalan painting.

 Eugeni d’Ors had already been speaking for some years of a new cultural movement, Noucentism, in his daily «Glosari» in the newspaper «La Veu de Catalunya», a movement which in respect to art did not define a specific style. Ors defended the work of the artists of his own generation and grouped them under the banner of what he called Noucentism, which until then was more of a wish than a real defined and differentiated aethetic form.

Within this context the death of Isidre Nonell in February 1911 left young Catalan painting without its most charismatic leader. At the same time, the personal version of Post-lmpressionism headed by the deceased painter instantly lost a great part of its force and representativeness. In this situation Sunyer’s exhibition was a revelation and the style he presented was exactly the example that the new Noucentist movement had been looking for.

As if he had followed the advice of Torres-Garcia, who for some time had been urging young Catalan artists to abandon the influence of the people from the North and turn their attention towards the Mediterranean, Sunyer -who until then had been living in Paris and painted in a Post-Impressionist style that was close to Bonnard’s- unexpectedly changed the focus of his work and introduced an idealized -solemn, Arcadian and simple to the point of naive- vision of the Mediterranean that was inspired by Cezanne.

This «naive» transformation was not understood all that well at the beginning. Other than from the hostile traditionalists there was resistence from within the new movement. Joaquim Folch i Torres, the single critic of the young Noucentism, devoted a long article to the exhibition, but he was surprized that Sunyer, whom he considered «so knowledgeable in matters of his profession,» would leave out «the means that in such a glorious way could express his feelings» in his attempt to return to the primary, and so as to confirm his opinion he did not doubt to venture that if Giotto «would have had more knowledge of his trade he would have put it all to the service of expressing the feelings he wanted to translate.»

Joan Maragall, the most regarded Catalan poet and intellectual at the time, greeted Sunyer’s contribution as the quintessence of the Catalan character, albeit with a certain amount of uncertainty because until then this great writer represented the Modernist world against which the new generation composed by Sunyer, Ors, Torres-Garcia and 50 many others (Casanovas, Clara, Nogues, etc.) were rising up.

Maragall really established the new Sunyer and centered his argument around the oil titled Pastoral (it is today kept at the Arxiu Maragall in Barcelona), which endowed this work with an added value that provoked its acquisition by Francesc Cambo, the most promissing politician in contemporary Catalonia.

Whatever Maragall said about Pastoral is also applicable to Mediterranean Sea, which due to the title the artist gave it is the most explicit symbol of the «Mediterranismo» that from then onwards 50 successfully vindicated the Noucentist school. The fact that, a little after its presentation in Barcelona and when the work was exhibited in Munich, Sunyer gave it the highest price amongst all the works shown and that he from then onwards always kept it in his private collection are beyond doubt clear indications of the work’s emotional weight for the artist.

Francesc Fontbona