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JOAN JUNYER.
3 Costume designs (Minotaur and 2 others). Mixed media on board. Average size 750x553
mm; 29
1
/
2
x21
3
/
4
inches, board. Signed and dated (1947) in pencil, lower margin. Edges vari-
ously chipped, one design with numerous repairs to recto and verso, pencil notations on
verso.
[600/900]
Designs include Minotaur dancer, trio of dancers in grey and yellow, and female in costume. Junyer
was a highly talented and prolific Catalan costume and theater designer of the 20th century. Studying
in Majorca before the Spanish Civil War, he became interested in folk dances linked with the island’s
agricultural festivals. He was deaf by birth but expressed the movement of the dancers through color
and abstract forms here and later in Cuba. Over the years he became very interested in design theory,
producing a large body of work , most successfully designing sets and costumes in 1943 for The
Cuckolds’ Fair for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. In 1945 the Museum of Modern Art mounted
an exhibition of his drawings, and maquettes concerning the function of painting and sculpture in rela-
tion to theater design.Two years later, he created Cretan sets and costumes for John Taras’s ballet The
Minotaur for Ballet Society which were highly praised but the turgid choreography and scoring closed
the ballet after only two performances. It broke Junyer who returned to Spain to paint, leaving theater
behind him—Spangenberg; editor.The Golden Age of Costume and Set design for the Ballet Russe
de Monte Carlo 1938-1944.The Art Institute of Chicago holds several similar designs in their per-
manent collection donated by Lincoln Kirstein.
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NO LOT.
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