Feliu Elias

Feliu Elias i Bracons (Barcelona, ​​October 8, 1878 - August 1948), a cartoonist, caricaturist, painter, illustrator and art critic, was popularly known for his pseudonyms Apa (for humorous drawing and The cartoon) and Joan Sacs (for the theory of art and writing) As a painter, he signed with his own name. He is one of the most prominent humorist cartoonists of the first half of the twentieth century

Study at the Artistic Circle of Sant Lluc and at the Artistic Circle of Barcelona Start collaborating in the magazine Cu-Cut! (1902), Garba (1905-1906) and El Poble Català until 1908 founded and directed the weekly humorous Papitu, one of the most important Catalan humorous publications of all time

He is expelled from the writing of ¡Cu-Cut! To publish jokes to the Papitu contra la Lliga Regionalista, which edited La Veu de Catalunya and Cu-Cut!

In 1911 the government suspended the constitutional guarantees and Apa, judged by the Law of Jurisdictions, must abandon the leadership of the Papitu and flee to Paris to avoid a conviction for having published a series of drawings in this magazine. He works with the publications Picarol (1912) and La Rialla (1913)

He returned to Catalonia, where he founded the Nova Magazine (1914) and collaborated with La Piula (1916), L'Estevet (1921-1923), Bella Terra (1923-1927), La Mainada (1921-1923), Virolet ( 1922-1931), El Borinot (1923-1927), Mr. Daixonses and Ms. Dallonses (1926), Jordi (1928) or Mirador (1929-37) and La Publicidad, where he will do from 1922 a daily joke on the first page He also collaborated in prestigious French magazines, such as Paris Journal, Paris Midi, Assiette au Beurre or Formes

Their covers are also notable in Iberia magazine (1915-1918) defending the allied cause during the first Great War, drawings that will be collected in the book Kameraden, a trilingual edition published in France with a prologue by French artist Sem, and a study Of the prestigious John Grand-Carteret The cartoons favorable to the allied cause earned him the distinction of the Great Cross of the Legion of Honor. He was also an outstanding illustrator and painter, especially during the last years of his life, participating in A large number of exhibitions

He worked as a lecturer at the School of Librarians, the Superior School of Fine Arts and the Elementary School of Work

In 1923 he participated in the foundation of the Socialist Union of Catalonia, of whose board of directors he was a member of the culture vocal. He was also a contributing member of the Socialist magazine Social Justice, from where he criticized socialist realism

He wrote a large number of texts on art in very diverse publications, and interesting monographs on artists (Benet Mercadé, Simó Gómez, Enric Monserdà, Joan Brull), among which Xavier Nogués (Quaderns Blaus, 1926) stands out for what he has Of personal testimony

His work in two volumes Modern Catalan sculpture (1926-28) is still an indispensable source on this subject. Among many other books, in 1931, he edited an interesting essay on humor drawing: L'Art Of the cartoon It can be considered, together with Rafael Benet, the first rigorous historian of contemporary Catalan art

At the beginning of the Civil War, he was exiled for fear of repression of the FAI, not to return until after the events of May During the last months of the war, he delivered radio conferences on Marxist aesthetics. Once the Second War was exiled and begun Worldwide, he was interned in a concentration camp of the Vichy regime

The drawings of the Apa, carefully watched, full of intelligent and implacable satire, are a clairvoyant example of the types and customs of the first quarter of the twentieth century, and are without a doubt among the most humorous drawings Bold ones that have never been made in this country There are original ones in the Library of Catalonia

His artistic origins must be placed near the Noucentisme next to Eugeni d'Ors, who was distancing himself to practice a critical Noucentisme against the idealistic vision of D'Ors himself

As a painter, he began influenced by the Catalan postmodernist style of Isidre Nonell, whom he had hired as a collaborator in his Papitu magazine, to cultivate a very detailed Realism, with which he achieved a magical atmosphere that of Sometimes it shows parallel details to the Hyperrealism. It is a style very close to the German Neue Sachlichkeit Germanic
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