Antoni Clave Poster from Musee Rath, Geneva, Switzerland, 1961

Antoni Clave was born in Barcelona in 1913, by age 13, he began working in a textile shop and taking evening courses at the Escuela de Artes y Oficios “Llotja” (a school attended by both Pablo Picasso and Joan Miró). During the Spanish Civil War, Clavé was hired to design posters for the Republican government, though he eventually fled to France. Influenced early in his career by artists like Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard, in the 1940s he met and befriended Picasso, a meeting that altered the trajectory of his work. Clavé is now best known for his collage-like paintings that are often constructed with torn bits of newspaper and other printed materials, and his sculptures that often incorporate found objects as well. Clavé was also a prolific set designer for the ballet and opera, and was nominated for two Academy Awards, Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design, for his work on the 1952 film Hans Christian Andersen. Clavé’s work can be found in the collections of the Paris Museum of Modern Art, the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, and the Tate in London, among other institutions.