International studio (60.1916/1917)

Studio- Talk


“‘INVOCATION OF LAKSHMI”

BY FEDERICO BELTRAN-MASSES

BARCELONA.—Federico Beltran-Masses
has in the past year obtained one of the
greatest satisfactions to which an artist
can aspire — official recognition and
■success in his native country, and that at an age
when the majority of those who follow the path of
art make their first start and find how great are
the obstacles that lie in their way. During the
past summer before his departure from Spain to
settle in Paris, Beltran desired to let the public
of Barcelona and Madrid see a collection of his
work, and the result proved a great success,
demonstrating clearly that, in spite of his youth,
the artist is not one of those who are still seeking
for their bearings, but one who, having found
the right direction, is pursuing it with confidence
and enthusiasm. He is an indefatigable and
enterprising worker, possessing an exquisite taste,
and as a painter he has devoted himself particu-
larly to the presentment of those feminine types

that were wont in former days to haunt the fetes
of Versailles and Andalusia. If we would look
for a parallel to him we shall find it in the French
painter, the late Gaston La Touche, but the
resemblance between the two is purely one of
spirit, for in regard to technique their work is
entirely different.
Beltran delights in reviving the festive scenes of
bygone times, Oriental or Spanish, and indeed
everything that enables him to present an harmoni-
ous juxtaposition of gay colour and decorative
elements, and woman is ever an indispensable
constituent of his compositions. He is an accom-
plished draughtsman, for not in vain has he
devoted himself with zeal to that essential part
of his practice; but his Southern temperament
has given him a special enthusiasm for colour,
the secrets of which he is ever revealing; his
methods are truly personal, and his manipulation

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