Eliseu Meifrèn I Roig Biography | Oil Paintings

Eliseu Meifrèn i Roig gave up his medical study at the age of twenty-one, and enrolled at the Escola de la Llotja to study art, his teachers were Antoni Caba and Ramon Martí Alsina. In 1879, he went to Paris for further study and supported himself by selling small canvases and sketches of Paris cityscapes on the street, but a brief tour of Italy influenced a style change in his paintings.

He returned to Spain in 1881 for a short time and the following year, Eliseu Meifrèn I Roig married, and returned to Paris for his honeymoon and decided to settle there. In 1890 at the Sala Parés in Barcelona, he had his first one-man show and exhibited seventy oil paintings, the works that did not sell were auctioned off, surprising everyone, and his friend Santiago Rusiñol acted as the auctioneer. The money from all the paintings sold was used to return to Italy.

In 1892, he returned to Paris and befriended many of the Impressionists artists, this led to him changing his color palette. Five years later, he accepted an invitation from the Gabinete Literario Theater in Las Palmas in the Canary Islands, his home there became a makeshift art academy, where Néstor Martín-Fernández de la Torre was one of his students.

Eliseu Meifrèn i Roig fame peaked at the turn of the century, with exhibitions in Europe and South America, but, after the commercial failure of his paintings at the Real Círculo Artístico de Barcelona, he decided to move to the very prosperous city of Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1903. He held his first show not long after and also organized a large exposition of Spanish Catalonian painters the following year, including pastels by Pablo Picasso.

In 1905, he moved again to a new position as Director of the Escola de d´Arts i Oficis de Palma on Mallorca. From there he continued his travels to France, Italy, Argentina, and Belgium, where he participated in the International Exposition, winning the Silver Medal. In 1915, he made a trip to the United States to promote himself at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. Finally, in 1917, Eliseu Meifrèn i Roig returned to his hometown Barcelona to stay. When the Spanish Civil War began in 1936, he and his family fled to Manresa, where they lived as refugees until 1939. In December of that year, his final exhibition was held in Barcelona, it was a critical and financial success, but he was too ill to attend a few weeks later, he died.

Art Movement: Impressionism.
Artists Influencing Eliseu Meifren: Antoni Caba, Ramon Martí Alsina.
He Traveled To Argentina, Italy, France, Belgium, USA.
Painters Eliseu Meifrèn i Roig Influenced: Néstor Martín-Fernández de la Torre.
Artist Biography compiled by Albert L. Mansour at The World's Artist, with text adapted from Wikipedia.