Duration: 1 hour 32 minutes. Subtitles in Spanish and English. Director: Ignacio Estrela, music by Josué Vergara and the collaboration of Guillermo del Toro, John Howe and William Stout
Available for rental and purchase on Vimeo
Teaser of "Segrelles. Universal Illustrator"
Synopsis:
The work of the Valencian painter Josep Segrelles is one of the most influential for contemporary artists.
Through his more than five thousand works, the universality of his artistic figure is recognised, who already achieved international recognition in the twenties and thirties of the twentieth century.
"Segrelles belongs to the most select list of the greats of world illustration, of those great creators who expand the stories they illustrate. He is a total creator, a master of narrative and a world treasure".
Guillermo del Toro.
José Segrelles Albert was a Spanish painter, illustrator and poster artist, born in Albaida (Valencia) on 18 March 1885 and died in the same town on 3 March 1969.
He had a very personal style that departed from the costumbrismo that prevailed in the art of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His painting is included in orientalism, symbolism, fantastic realism and science fiction, as well as Art Deco in his facet as a poster artist, and he is considered a pioneering artist well ahead of his time.
His parents were Vicente Segrelles Bellver and Dolores Albert Soler, who formed a large family of 12 children, José Segrelles being the third. He is also the uncle of the painters and illustrators Vicente Segrelles Sacristán and Eustaquio Segrelles del Pilar, as well as of the Valencian gallery owners Vicente and José Segrelles del Pilar.
He was a very precocious artist who at the age of five was already drawing on any surface within his reach, and at the age of only nine (1894) he moved, together with his older brother, to Valencia to begin his pictorial training, where he lived until 1903. He studied at the San Carlos Royal Academy of Fine Arts and at the School of Craftsmen.
His teachers were José Garnelo y Alda, Muñoz Degrain, José Benlliure and Joaquín Sorolla, with whom he used to go outdoors to paint on the Cabanyal beach in Valencia. Sorolla himself said to Benlliure, "I have a pupil who draws better than you.
In 1898 an oil painting of his measuring approximately 50×70 was displayed in a shop window in Valencia on a sign reading "painted by a 13-year-old boy", and he began to sell his first works.
Also that year he received his first recognition, being awarded a Medal at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Carlos.
Extract of the biography that you can find in full at the Segrelles Museum pageatthe Segrelles Museum.
Related links:
Segrelles unpublished: photographs for before an illustration.
josegrelles.com. Forum and news about Segrelles' work.
Documentary discovered thanks to the suggestion of Antonio Nogueras.
