Federico Beltran-Masses
Images and Biography
Jeffrey Winter Fine Arts
8272 Melrose Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90046
310-657-4ART (4278)
Federico Armando Beltran-Masses
1885-1949
Federico Armando Beltran-Masses was born in 1885 in Guaira de la Melena, Cuba. His father was a Spanish military envoy to Cuba. After the war between the United States and Cuba ended in 1899, the family returned to Spain.
Beltran-Masses studied with the painter Sorolla at l’École des Beaux-Arts de Barcelone. In 1905, he traveled to Madrid to study the collection of Spanish and European art at the Prado museum. In 1916, he moved to Paris where he received an honor from the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts.
Commissions were received in the United States, Belgium, Italy, and India. In 1919, he took charge of organizing the Exposition Hispano-Français des Beaux-Arts. In 1920, he exhibited an exotic nude titled “Salome” at the Venice Biennial, which is now in the Museo Casa Lis in Salamanca, Spain.
Beltran-Masses exhibited at the Wildenstein Galleries in New York and Palm Beach, Florida in 1925. In the August 1925 issue of International Studio Magazine, Marguerite Tjader wrote an extensive article about the artist.
The Musée des Offices de Florence bought several of his self-portraits. In 1928 he was named Commissioner General of l’Exposition International des Beaux-Arts in commemoration of the centenary of Francisco de Goya. He was a member of l’Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts de Madrid and was named Chevalier du Légion d'Honneur in France, and a Knight of the order of Malta. In 1934 Beltran-Masses exhibited at the Royal Watercolor Society in London, and in 1938 at the Burlington Galleries.
