Àlvar Suñol Munoz-Ramos (b. 1935) Spanish, "Smell" Lithograph. Part of his "Five Human Senses" Series. Limited Edition framed print. Numbered in pencil 78/125 bottom left. Hand-signed in pencil bottom right. 

Overall Size: 31 3/4 x 37 3/4 in. 

Sight Size: 28 1/4 x 34 in. 

#7541 . 

Àlvar Suñol Munoz-Ramos, known professionally simply as Alvar, was born January 29th, 1935 in Montgat, Spain, a Catalan fishing village on the Mediterranean coast near Barcelona. Alvar first began painting at the age of 12, and was accepted to the Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes de San Jorge in Barcelona when he was 17. A year later he won the Young Painter’s Prize in a competition sponsored by the city, and his painting was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in Barcelona for its permanent collection. In 1957, he had his first solo exhibition in the Galleries Layetana, but left art for one year to serve in the Spanish Military. In 1959 Alvar won a scholarship to the Institut Francais in Paris, where he spent a year before meeting Juan Fuentes, the director of the Galerie Drouant. Fuentes sold Alvar’s first set of paintings in France in just a week, and Alvar readily signed a contract with the gallery. He brought his childhood sweetheart, Rosella Berenguer, to live with him in Paris, and they married in 1960. He studied further at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, and was invited to join the Spanish School of Paris, a group of the top young artists from Spain, organized by the Charpentier Gallery. Throughout the 1960s he showed with other prestigious Spanish artists including Miro, Dali, and Picasso. In 1962 the Monede Gallery in New York presented Alvar’s first solo exhibition in the United States. In 1963, Alvar produced his first original lithographs for a solo show at Galerie Drouant, which led to a flurry of prints created and exhibited regularly throughout the United States, Europe, Canada, and Japan. After spending ten years in Paris he and his wife returned to Spain, where he has lived and worked in his studio ever since. Between 1975 and 1990 his creative efforts were focused predominantly on lithographs, but in 2000 Alvar transitioned away from lithography and rededicated himself to painting in the form of large-scale murals and canvases, encompassing a range of subjects from ethereal figures to majestic interiors to biblical narratives. In 2001 he was commissioned to design a public mixed media mural of the four seasons for Tiana, a suburb of Barcelona. In 2003 he created a permanent public installation in the Plaza de Mallorquines, across from the train station, in his hometown of Montgat. In 2008 he made a sculpture of Catalan cellist Pablo Casals that stands in the Boulogne Billancourt area of Paris. Alvar works in a variety of mediums, including watercolor, oil, ceramics, engravings, sculpture, graphite drawings, and murals, and his works have been displayed in over 40 museums (both one-off exhibitions and permanent collections) and over 95 galleries and museums throughout the world. He is considered to be one of the last living great European Modernists.