Tossa de mar

Inscriptions: Signed (lower left). Countersigned and titled on the verso.

Provenance: Bonhams, London, 11 December 2008, lot 2.

Literature: Tossa, Babel de les Arts, Art. Volum Segon, Publicació de la Junta Municipal d’Exposicions d’Art, Barcelona, October 1934 – July 1935, Fig. 3, reproduced (dated 1934).

Notes: This painting was most certainly painted en plein air during one of the several stays by Mezinger and Suzanne (represented on the canvas) in the Catalan town of Tossa de mar; a fortified medieval town on the Costa Brava. The work shows prominently one of the battlemented stone-walled cylindrical towers with parapets. The site was declared a national historic monument in 1931, three years prior to Metzinger’s painting of the scene.

The Governor’s House, now the Museu Municipal de Tossa de Mar, houses Metzinger’s 1934 Ballarina (AM-34-004) in the permanent collection. The museum was inaugurated 1 September 1935. The museum comprises an important collection of modern and contemporary by Spanish and foreign artists who frequented Tossa during the 1930s.