Self-portrait

According to the testimony of those who knew him, the real and most exact image of the sculptor is in his Autoretrat, a work which develops the naturalist aspect of his character. It is the face of a man smoking who grimaces from the smoke coming from the tip of the lit cigarette between his lips. Arnau Puig tells us:” It is a volume which expresses agitation in a situation of artistic repose, in which the expressive and compositional edges have been eliminated -which would have taken it towards a cubist-style treatment- and only the basic forms have been maintained, those which determine of the harmonic combination in the ensemble of planes”. Salvador Martorell Ollé (1895-1968) He commenced his training at the Arana i Bru Studio in Tarragona; in 1914 he moved to Barcelona where he studied for one year at the Llotja School and worked at the Gabriel Bechini company. With a scholarship from the Diputació of Tarragona, he stayed in Paris during 1918 and 1919, before returning to Barcelona. He worked as a lecturer at the Tarragona Studio-School of Painting and Sculpture (1934-1938) and at the Studio-School of Art of the Diputació of Tarragona (1947-1965). His work is formally associated with the noucentism movement, with a fine mastery of technique and a great sensibility in the treatment of the human figure.Text by Francesc Roig i Queralt