Catalan man. Santa Fe, circa 1941.

Etching on paper. Measures. Paper: 29 x 19.5 cm. Plate: 18 x 14.1 cm. Printed inside the engraving “Gustave Cochet ”, and in graphite pencil “4/50 - Catalan man - (and the signature of) Gustavo Cochet”.

Gustavo Cochet had a sensitive look at the world around him. He portrayed it without the gadgets of yesteryear or those created by his contemporaries, his was a social realism, in the manner of Berni. We can well observe it in the present work, Catalan man. The scene transports us to that time, a placid moment of this gentleman, drinking coffee and wine and smoking a cigar, in the calm summer shade of the gallery of a Barcelona square. Comfortable, he rests one arm on the table and the other on the back of the chair. In the fashion of those years -the 30's- his pants are very high-waisted, his shirt is wrinkled and the cuffs are gathered, and the jacket -Mediterranean warmth through- on the chair. Although the work is not dated, it clearly belongs to the artist's own production -we are referring to the previous batch-, made after his final return to our country in 1941, when he decided to transfer to metal the images that he collected years before in Europe.