Joaquín Quirico Marcelino Clausell Traconis (June 16, 1866 – November 28, 1935) was a Mexican lawyer and political activist, who was predominantly known for his Impressionist paintings of Mexican land and seascapes.
He was born and raised in the city of Campeche, where he began drawing as a young student. However, he had to flee the city for Mexico's capital after confronting Campeche's governor in public. In the capital, he made his way to law school, despite poverty, but continued his opposition to the political status quo, landing him in jail, interrupting his studies. After he finished his classes he began to work as a journalist in opposition newspapers when in 1893 a series of fictionalized accounts of army campaigns against the Tarahumara people landed him back in jail. Escaping his captors and with help, he fled to the U.S. and Paris. In the latter city, he discovered Impressionism which he admired but did not begin to produce his own paintings until well after he returned to Mexico.
Clausell has two periods of production, during the 1900s and from 1920 until his death, with the break coming during the Mexican Revolution. His canvas works are almost exclusively dedicated to landscapes with some seascapes, mostly sticking to the base of Impressionism with some experimentation in coloring. However he also produced images on the walls of his studio, which are far more varied in theme and style, with elements of Symbolism. While he was not integrated with Mexico's art scene during his lifetime, his work was noticed and appreciated by artists such as Diego Rivera and Dr. Atl. Since 1995, when a tribute to his work took place at the Mexico's National Art Museum, he has been written about and gained more recognition.
Personal life
Clausell is the son of José Clausell from Catalonia (now northeastern Spain) and Marcelina Franconis from Campeche, Mexico. His father immigrated to Mexico initially to work in shipbuilding with his brother Mauro, but later became a businessman in the city of Campeche. Joaquín was born Joaquín Quirico Marcelino in the city of Campeche on June 16, 1866, the only son of the couple. According to family lore, the couple knew they could not have any more children so they put all the names they liked onto this one.
The family was prosperous enough to allow Joaquín to study at a private school called the Instituto Campechano from primary to high school; however, the death of his father meant that Joaquín had to work as well as study to make family ends meet.
Since he was young he had a rebellious nature. When he was an altar boy, he decided to use the red vestment as part of his costume for Carnival, which had him banned from this religious role. This nature pushed him to oppose much of the political status quo of his day, related to the Porfirio Díaz regime. At the age of 16, he confronted the then-governor of Campeche Joaquín Baranda in public, which resulted in the artist's expulsion from school and the state. Clausell went to Mexico City with little money, and started to work cleaning equipment at a pharmacy in order to survive. In the capital, he met many of his generation, rich and poor, with liberal ideas in opposition to the government. Most, if not all, of these were students with no fixed careers.
Clausell briefly attended the National School of Engineers, but since his interest was in law, he did not stay long. Through friends, he found ways to take law books from the National Law School library and other buildings to study at night. Clausell was caught doing this and jailed, but this prompted a visit from the school's dean. The dean was moved by Clausell extreme poverty and desire to learn and gave him admission and a scholarship. However, Clausell still needed to work odd jobs to feed himself and even pawned a medal he won debating in order to buy food.
Admission to law school did not end his political activities. He had oratory and organization skills which he used, to organize students in 1889 to honor the recently deceased political exile Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada when the body was repatriated to Mexico. This pushed the government to have an official reception for the body, which they tried to keep as quiet as possible. However, Clausell disrupted the official event by speaking out for Lerdo de Tejado's policies, wound up being arrested for sedition, and spent several months in the Belem Prison. While Clausell was able to complete all of his law classes in 1892, the jail time prevented him from taking the bar exam and receiving his degree.
Clausell's later work as a journalist got him into political trouble once again, forcing him into exile, first to the United States and then to Paris. He kept in touch with friends and family through letters, at first signed with pseudonyms. This included letters to an early girlfriend named Esther La Chiti, despite the fact that she had married. While in Paris, Clausell was introduced to the Impressionism art movement and he was particularly impressed with the work of Camille Pissarro. Clausell struck up a friendship with the older artist, visiting him several times in his Paris studio and received an invitation to visit Pissarro's hometown of Rouen, but did not go, most likely due to lack of funds. There is also no evidence that Clausell took classes or otherwise began to paint while in Europe.
Clausell returned to Mexico City in 1896, and initially returned to his bohemian lifestyle with the writers, journalists and artists of what was called the Centuria Azul or Modernista generation. Clausell was able to arrange his bar exam and received his law degree, ironically signed by Porfirio Díaz, in 1901.
During this time as well he married Angela Cervantes, the sister of Antonio Cervantes, who had helped Clausell economically during his exile. The family was descended of the Counts of Santiago de Calimaya and Clausell moved into the family residence which today is the Museum of the City of Mexico. The family had managed to conserve enough of their fortune to still live comfortably and eventually Angela inherited the mansion. The couple had four children: Angela, Dolores, Estella and Joaquín.
Angela did not particularly approve his Clausell's painting or many of his acquaintances, so two rooms were constructed for him on the roof of the building, one of which would become his studio. This studio was a large room with doors and windows on three sides, leading to the name of “tower of a thousand windows.” Clausell used the studio as a refuge from his wife and her family, and to entertain friends such as Dr. Atl, Juan O'Gorman, Diego Rivera, Carlos Pellicer, Salvador Novo and Julio Ruelas where they discussed modern ideas. In 1908, Atl created a pastel portrait of Clausell. He also used the walls of the studio to paint, eventually filling them with sketches and paintings in various stages of completion and without an overall plan in mind. These number about 1,300 works in various sizes and are distinct from his canvas landscape works by their wide variety of themes and elements outside of Impressionism. The murals have been mostly forgotten because the studio section has generally been closed to the public, partially or fully because of its deteriorated condition.
Despite his entertaining, he was not a central figure in the Mexican art scene at the time, with his closest friend being Dr Atl, with whom he served as an officer of the Sociedad de Pintores y Escultores. He was also a Freemason, belonging to the Grand Lodge of the Valley of Mexico.
Clausell died on November 28, 1935, while on an outing with friends and family at the Lagos de Zempoala area south of Mexico City. He was walking on a hill near the lake when ground gave way under his feet and he fell down an embankment. The resulting landslide covered and suffocated him.
Political activism and law career Clausell is best known for his painting, although he was also an orator, journalist, politician and lawyer. He continued his rebellion against the Diaz regime after his graduation from law school, moving into journalism. At first he worked for El Universal, writing columns critical of the government under the pseudonym of Juan Pérez, but government pressure soon terminated this job. Afterwards he tried to establish his own publication La Soberanía de los Estados but it failed due to lack of funds. He also collaborated with publications such as El Hijo del Ahuizote and El Monitor Republicano. Soon after Díaz was re-elected for a third time, Clausell co-founded an opposition newspaper called El Demócrata in 1893, which he also directed. Months after the founding, the paper began publishing excerpts of a fictionalized account of the army's offensive against the Tarahumara people in Chihuahua in Tomóchic, under this name. This landed him and co founder Francisco R Blanco back into Belem Prison. It was likely that the facts of the story, if not the story itself were relayed to Clausell by Heriberto Frías, but Clausell insisted it was all his own idea. Just before his trial, Clausell escaped and with the help of friends self-exiled to the United States and France.
By the beginning of the Mexican Revolution, Clausell was allied with the party of Francisco I. Madero. However, there is no information about what, if any, role Clausell played in the conflict, especially after Madero's assassination. It is known that he spent much of the 1910s working as a lawyer and defending many of the poor in the prisons in Xochmilco. He did this work either pro bono or accepting whatever his clients could pay him, which often was in farm products, leading to the nickname of “Abogado Gallina” (Lawyer Chicken).
Artistry
It is estimated that during his lifetime, Clausell produced about 400 works, 100 of which are large-scale works. However, he did not sign his works and rarely dated them, making cataloging and a chronology very difficult. He did not consider himself a professional painter, He was a recluse, not promoting his work and with a few exceptions, did not associate with contemporary Mexican artists.
There is no known association between Clausell and the older but still contemporary landscape artist José María Velasco, who was famous for his renderings of the Valley of Mexico. With few exceptions, he did not sell any of his works and often gave them away. However, despite all this he did serve as an art teacher at the “escuelas de aire libre” (free and open art classes given in parks and other public spaces) with Dr. Atl, becoming director of the school in Iztacalco in 1930.
While he drew cartoons as a young student, his interest in painting was peaked when in Paris, attending an 1896 exhibition of Camille Pissarro, whose work impressed him. Clausell is generally considered to have been self-taught or described as a kind of genius by contemporary newspapers, although art historian Xavier Moyssen believes he might have had formal instruction. There are no records in art schools in Paris or Mexico City that indicate that he attended courses at these institutions nor do any of his personal documents or family accounts indicate such study. However, Moyssen believes that several works, copies of works by other painters, were probably done with Clausell in the role of student. These include a copy of a work by Edith Corbet, with Clausell dedicated on the back to Van Gogh, Cezanne and Monet, the oldest known work of the artist. He also did a copy of Alberto Fuster's “Retrato de un mujer,” a non-landscape piece, in 1902.