Lot 35: Francisco Borges Salas (1901-1994)

Portrait of a Woman in Renaissance Costume
signed and dated in pencil upper right: Borges/Paris/ 1929 brown chalk with stumping, over traces of red and black chalk underdrawing
615 x 472mm

Born in Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the Canary Islands, Francisco Salas trained as a sculptor and engraver in his native town. He then worked in Madrid with the sculptor Victorio Macho before moving to Paris, in 1925. There, he completed his training with Emile Antoine Bourdelle (1861-1929), until the master's death, in 1929. He returned to Tenerif where he was soon appointed Professor of drawing at the Escuela de Artes y Oficios. In 1941, escaping political persecution, he fled to South America. It was only in 1962 that he returned to Tenerif, where he spent the remaining years of his life.
As sculptures by Salas are widely known throughout the Canary Islands, his works have also been shown regularly abroad. In 1936, Salas exhibited at the Venice Biennale; in 1943 and 1958, sculptures and drawings were included in important retrospective exhibitions on contemporary art from the Canary Island held in Madrid and Paris. Drawings by Francisco Salas form an integral part of his artistic production, as both a preparatory support for his sculptures and engravings as well as for their own capacity as finished compositions. The present sheet dates from 1929, when Salas was under the dominating influence of Bourdelle. The drawing contains the classical lyricism inherited from these years of training, where the artist displays his knowledge and debt to earlier forms of art.