From the article – own translation – attributed to the art critic, draftsman and painter Feliu Elies (Barcelona, 1878-1948) a Advertising (29-IX-1917). He used, among others, the pseudonym ‘Joan Sacs’ (abbreviated here: JS). It is perhaps the only author obituary that appeared in the Catalan press on the death of Edgar Degas (Paris, 1834-1917). Last July 19 was one hundred and ninety years since the death of this French artist who stood out as a painter, engraver, sculptor and photographer.
This famous painter, one of the most solid pillars of modern art, has just died in France, at the age of 83. He fought in his youth with the impressionist artists, among whom he distinguished himself by his special way of seeing and very particularly by his style. He distinguished himself so much that some critics considered him outside the Impressionist movement. A characteristic of his style was the use of neutral tones and united color, without the divided brushwork that the rest of the Impressionists preferred. Because the color of these was vivid, and his brushwork divided while that of Degas was quite the opposite. That is why it is considered to be a separate school. This was a mistake, because Impressionism did not mean exclusively, nor did it ever mean, a coloristic procedure or a certain range of color, but a deep Realism in the double sense of the adjective: deep in conception and deep in the interpretation. The work of Degas, the aesthetics of Degas, is also justly famous for having definitively and effectively affirmed the theory and practice of Deformism that one day timidly began the great Ingres (Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Montalban, Guiena, 1780 – Paris, 1867). This Deformism proposes a greater intensification of the artistic form by means of the intentional deformation of the retinal form, leading it to a more suggestive plastic expression than that which occurs with the classical canons. This tendency, which only in refined hands and great brains can produce the desired effect, was bound to be dangerous to others, and so it happened: imperfect temperaments assimilated this theory of form too little or too much, and reached the worst excesses, among which Cubism is pre-eminent, if it is considered as a pictorial school. Toulouse-Lautrec, one of his most famous disciples, accentuated the deformism of Degas, and with his itch to achieve greater formal expression with greater deformation, he ever crossed that delicate point that separates the sublime expression from the grotesque Degas never crossed this terrible border. His work is formidable for an inconceivable amount of plastic elements brought to the highest expressive intensity to this limit. Degas sent a thousand Pegasus running rampant through the valleys and mountains of his real world, and when he reached the bottom of the subjectivist abyss he always knew how to arrogantly stop them with his powerful hand. Degas had been incapacitated for some years for his art. His eyesight was failing excessively: the pains and privations of old age had increased his natural hypochondria and unsociability. This great man was almost as famous for his malignity as for his talent. His satires broke the record for biting: they are cited as monuments of witty cruelty. Like Flaubert, he succeeded in describing modern life wonderfully; as the author of Madame Bovary, Degas suffered instead horribly; the two geniuses admired him fervently and at the same time hated him in the roughest and blindest way. (…)
Source: www.ara.cat
