Pierre Ysern y Alié

“Ysern has eyes only for them… Already the girls swirl. They look like living flowers that quickly draw unknown figures in space… The projectors drown them in pink, then green, yellow light… […] Ysern suddenly started to paint. I observe him. His gaze embraces the scene with a quick glance and the colors flit across the stage.” André Payer, Revue littéraire, 1924.

In Paris, the painter had taken the habit of going to dance halls which, with the complicity of an usherette, opened a box for him. Inside, he pulled out his little box of painting materials and immediately went to work, while a dazzling firework display of a ballet of girls dazzled on the stage. “Like Toulouse-Lautrec, he likes to study the striking effects of contrast, the unforeseen relationships, the astonishing lightings that spread, suddenly pointed on a face, a pair of legs in movement, the raw and pallid light of a projector”, testifies André Payer.

Did Ysern Y Alié seek to continue the tradition of Degas? Georges Turpin, a friend and critic, answers negatively. In Catalonia, Alié defines himself as an impressionist who ignores himself. In Paris, he became aware of the affinity he had with a Renoir, a Pissaro or a Manet. Thereafter, he is classified as a Tachist.

• 1888 : Universal Exhibition of Barcelona
• 1919: National Exhibition of Fine Arts in Barcelona (Main works: Pedralles and Surroundings of Barcelona)
• 1925 : Exhibition at the Daulmau Gallery in Barcelona
• 1927: Exhibition at the Pinacoteca