Paris Montparnasse, the Bohemian Life, 1930: The Artist's Model Resting Female Nude Oil on Canvas

Wow - this painting perfectly encapsulates the artistic Parisian Montparnasse bohemianism of the 1920s and 30s. We see a beautiful but certainly nonchalent woman seated on a day bed in the artist's studio (the clue to the location are the canvasses stacked to her right and the sketch pinned to the wall. The model, with her hair in a towel turban, as if she had just stepped out of the bath, and sloppily worn slippers, giving the scene an air of domesticity. Perhaps she was the girlfriend of the artist?

The artist, Cristóbal Mauro Arteche de Miguel, was 30 years old when he painted this work. But my, he has already been active in his young life! Born in Gijon in Asturias/Spain, he had left for Cuba at the age of 17, where he earned his living publishing drawings in the capital's newspapers. Two years on, he went to New York, where he painted posters for plays and variety shows. From New York he moved to California, where he drew the portraits of great silent movie stars. These images were reproduced in newspapers in Mexico and other South American countries, earning him notably a large exhibition of his paintings in Santiago de Chile. He relocated to Buenos Aires, where he began working for the newspaper Crítica. In 1925 he was sent to Paris as a correspondent. He painted and exhibited successfully in the French capital and it is there that our painting was created.

Cristobal returned to his native Spain in 1932, where he tirelessly produced posters against fascism. During the Civil War, he launched a campaign to help provide warm clothing to those who were cold in the trenches.

In 1939, with the advent of the Franco dictatorship, Christobal Artèche had to go into exile, leaving Europe for Argentina aboard a French ship, along with other Spanish Republican intellectuals and a multitude of Jewish refugees.

He would return to Spain only in the early 1960s, a short few years before his death.

Our oil on canvas by Cristobal Arteche measures 92 x 73 cm and is signed at the upper rght, where it is also dated (19)30 by the artist. The painting is presented in an elegant frame by Lambert-Rouland, the high end gallerist and framer on rue de la Boetie near the Champs-Elysées. The overall framed size is 100 x 82 cm

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