GÁNDARA BONNÍN, Manuel

Manuel Gándara Bonnín (Barcelona, 1902 – Barcelona, 1960) began his artistic training at the Sant Jordi Superior School of Fine Arts in Barcelona and in private academies around the Eixample district, learning under masters who inherited the great 19th-century Catalan academic tradition and early Modernisme, from whom he acquired a rigorous command of life drawing and composition. Deeply influenced by the naturalist landscape painting of the Olot School and the mark left by masters such as Joaquim Vayreda, Modest Urgell, and Eliseu Meifrèn, he adopted plein air practice, focusing his work on countryside subjects, wooded paths, and pilgrimage scenes in the Vallès and Prat de Llobregat regions. His pictorial style belongs to a regionalist-accented Post-Impressionism defined by the use of a direct, dense, and heavily impastoed brushstroke that adds rich texture to the surface, a skillful handling of light filtered through foliage, and a restrained palette of ochres, greens, and earth tones. Throughout his career, he exhibited regularly at Barcelona's most prestigious art galleries, including Sala Parés, Galerías Laietanes, Sala Busquets, and Sala Gaspar, while taking part in the National Fine Arts Exhibitions and official competitions held by the Barcelona City Council. Today, his work is represented in prominent institutions and museums such as the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC), the Barcelona Provincial Council museum network —including the Museu de Granollers and the Museu Abelló in Mollet del Vallès—, the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo in Madrid, and various public and private Catalan collections.