Frederic Marès

Frederic Marès i Deulovol was born in Portbou, close to the border with France, in 1893 and reached Barcelona with his family in 1903, at the age of ten.

He developed his artistic formation in the Escuela de Artes y Oficios y Bellas Artes (Official School of Arts and Trades and Fine Arts, and completed his studies overseas.

Shortly after finishing his studies, he entered to form part of the body of professors of the abovementioned school, a task that he did not abandon until retiring in 1964.

Marès was a sculptor, collector and a teacher, and he shared the direction of the la Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes (Superior School of Fine Arts) and the Escuela de Artes Aplicadas de Barcelona (School of Applied Arts of Barcelona).

At the beginning of this teaching career, Marès worked in the workshop of the modernism sculptor Eusebi Arnau i Mascort. His first monument in Barcelona, dedicated to the canon Rodó in the Clot square, was inaugurated in 1919 of this period.

Sculptor
In these first years, Marès is considered a sculptor of second generation of the nineteenth-century .

The reputation that he harvests does not owe so much to this type of works but to his specialisation in the monumental sculpture.

At the end of the decade of the 20's, when he achieved several monuments in Barcelona, between which standouts include the work, 'Niña encima de un pez' (Girl on top of a fish), copy of one of four children who were decorating the ancient fountain of the Plaça Catalunya (today in the crossing of the Gran Via and the Rambla Catalunya).

Other works in the public statue field before the Civil War are the monument of Francesc Layret, the sculptors that decorate the staircase-lookout of Montjuïc and the façade of the Pavilion of the City in the same park.

Restorer

One the war was over, Marès' task was concentrated in restoration. Many monuments of Barcelona that survived the war were restored by him, like the case of the horse´s tail of the Ramón Berenguer III el Gran.

Since then Marès passed from being the artist most solicited to be in charge of these commissioned commeratives of official character that require an figurative language, like the statues of Jaume I and Jaume II in the Mallorca Cathedral, of the king Sancho of Mallorca in Perpignan, of Jaume I in Montpellier or the exempt sculptures that represent Alfonso III in Mahón, Jaume I and Ramón Muntaner in Figueres and Luis Vives in Elche.

He achieved various works in where he was trying to re-do the church with all the applied decorations and the whole statues and gold work of the interior; or as spectacular as La exaltation de la Santa Cruz de 1975 (The exaltation of the Santa Cruz of 1975), hung on the biggest altar of the Cathedral of Barcelona.

Collector

From an early age Marès revealed an interest to collect everything related to art and small graphic memories, penetrating to the world of the antiquarians and the auctions of works of art later on. It is then when he started acquiring his first collections.

Unlike many collectors, Marès did not come from wealthy family, that's why the source of financing his collections was never the familiar patrimony. They are the benefits obtained with the sculptors in charge that allowed him to finance his passion.

Firstly his collection was for personal enjoyment, for his family and friends, and only further on, towards the decade of the forties, the public vocation of Marès made it possible that those objects assembled throughout the years are known by the citizens. In 1944, the Asociación de Amigos de los Museos de Catalunya (Friends' Association of the Museums of Catalonia) organised an exhibition with a selection of the collection: of that time Marès made public the will to donate to the city, creating in this way the Museum Frederic Marès, in 1948. Marès passed in Barcelona in 1991.