Antoni Pitxot

Antoni Pitxot, or Antonio Pichot Soler in Castilian, also Antonio Pitxot, (born 1934 in Figueres, Catalonia) is a Catalan and Spanish painter who was a longtime friend and collaborator of Salvador Dalí.cite book|last=Etherington-smith|first=Meredith|title=The Persistence of Memory: A Biography of Dali|publisher=Da Capo Press|year=1995|ISBN=0306806622]

Pitxot, whose name is pronounced "peet-shot," was born into a family with many artists in its ranks, among them, his uncle Ramón Pichot. He began studying drawing at the age of thirteen, and he exhibited regularly in Lisbon, Bilbao, Barcelona, and Madrid in his twenties and thirties, winning many prizes, including the Gold Medal painting prize in Barcelona's La Punyalada competition in 1965.cite web|title=Dalí Theatre-Museum: Antoni Pitxot Soler (Figueres, 1934)|url=http://www.salvador-dali.org/museus/figueres/en_pitxot.html|accessdate=2008-06-19]

At the beginning of the 1960s, he was a close friend of the French painter Maurice Boitel, who painted many pictures on the Pitxot family's property in Cadaqués, a small port town on the Balearic Sea near the French border, that was also painted by Pablo Picasso and André Derain.

In 1966, Pitxot took up permanent residence in Cadaqués, where his family had owned a summer house since the end of the 19th century. He began to experiment with surrealism: in particular, he became focused on anthropomorphic figures composed of the stones that lined the seashores near his home. Pitxot worked in a unique way: he would build sculptures from stones, and then paint those sculptures in oil.

Much of Pixtot's work is concerned with allegory and myth, including the figure of Mnemosyne, the mother of the nine muses who personified memory, and a series of works about The Tempest.

Pitxot's association with Salvador Dalí began before his birth, because their families were acquainted. But Dalí became an early supporter of Antonio Pitxot's work, and eventually asked him to co-design the Dalí Theatre-Museum (Teatro Museo) in Figueres, Spain. There is also a permanent exhibition of Pitxot's work on one floor of that museum.

Pitxot and Dalí were nearly inseparable in the last years of Dalí's life: designing Dalí's museum, teaching art, and exchanging ideas about their work. Pitxot has been a protector of Dalí's legacy after his death: He is a member of the board of the Gala Salvador Dalí Foundation, and he has led, and sat on the board, of several other Dalí foundations.

He became the museum's director after Dalí's death.

Pitxot is a respected Spanish artist in his own right. In the year 2000, he was appointed corresponding academician for Cadaques of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Saint George. In the 2004, he received the Gold Medal of Merit in Fine Arts from the King of Spain as a recognition for his work. Pitxot's works are held in private collections and in various museums.

His grandson is the Catalan actor and imitator Bruno Oro Pitxot.

External links

* [http://www.salvador-dali.org/eng/pitxot/pitxot.htm Pitxot on Dali Museum English language page]

References