Julio Vila Y Prades Biography | Oil Paintings

Against his parent's wishes, Julio Vila y Prades began his artistic studies when he was a teenager at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Carlos with Francisco Domingo Marqués and Joaquín Agrasot. When he was twenty years old he became an assistant in the studio of Joaquín Sorolla in Madrid, and worked there from 1893 to 1904, while still painting and exhibiting. He was a frequent exhibitor at the National Exhibition of Fine Arts, where he took honorable mention in 1892 and 1897 and a medal in 1904 for his painting, Sobre el Arroz (On Rice). Also in 1904, he went to Paris to study at the Académie Julian for a short time, before leaving for Argentina, the same year.

Wanting to visit South America, his friend Sorolla contacted the Catalonian businessman and art promoter, José Artal, soon to be "Count", who was living in Buenos Aires, Argentina. With his support, Julio Vila y Prades went to Buenos Aires, where he painted landscapes and scenes on the pampas, such as Primera Junta and Conduciendo Hacienda, of gauchos on the pampas.

He returned to Spain in 1906, via Brittany, then visited Madrid, where he made drawings at the wedding of King Alfonso XIII.

In 1908, when he was thirty-five years old, following the death of his mother, Julio Vila y Prades returned to Buenos Aires and married Artal's twenty years old daughter, Carmen. Over the next few years from Buenos Aires, he traveled throughout Argentina, receiving several commissions for decorative works, including the ceiling at the Tigre Club of Buenos Aires, murals at the Plaza Hotel, the Government Palace in Tucumán and the Mar de Plata Club, in addition to painting numerous portraits.

Julio Vila y Prades wanted to move to Paris in 1914 but because of the start of World War I the family settled in San Sebastián instead. Julio Vila y Prades worked in New York, Havana, Caracas, and Mexico City. He returned to Spain in 1921 and painted the ceiling of the new Gran Kursaal de San Sebastián. After that, he went to Peru, to do on-site sketches for a mural of the Battle of Ayacucho, to be placed in the new Bolivarian Museum in Caracas, and in 1924 he traveled to San Francisco, to paint a mural for the Legion of Honor museum.

Artists Influencing Julio Vila y Prades: Francisco Domingo Marqués, Joaquín Agrasot, Joaquín Sorolla.
He Traveled To France, Argentina, USA, Cuba, Venezuela, Mexico, Peru.
Artist Biography compiled by Albert L. Mansour at The World's Artist, with text adapted from Wikipedia.