Daura Collection and Study Center

More than 600 paintings, prints, drawings and sculptures, as well as archival material related to the life and career of Catalan-American artist Pierre Daura (1896–1976) were donated to the Georgia Museum of Art in 2002. This transformative gift from Martha Randolph Daura in honor of her father has made the museum the most important repository of Daura’s oeuvre. The donation also included an endowment to support both the Study Center and the Pierre Daura Curator of European Art.

The Pierre Daura Study Center organizes exhibitions and promotes research of Daura’s work. Its archive contains correspondence, diaries, exhibition catalogues, newspaper articles, photographs and ephemera. It continually updates material related to posthumous exhibition and scholarly material. The Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library at the University of Georgia maintains an online finding aid for the center, accessible here. The Pierre Daura Curator of European Art directs the center as well as the museum’s programming in European art: research, exhibitions, publications and acquisitions.

Born in Barcelona, Daura studied at La Llotja Art Academy in Barcelona, where Picasso’s father was one of his teachers. Around 1914, he left Spain for Paris and worked in Émile Bernard’s studio. After three years of military service, he returned to Paris in 1920, settling in Montmartre and painting and designing fabrics for couturiers. Daura married American painter Louise Blair in 1928. He became friends with Joaquín Torres-García and Michel Seuphor and, with them, founded the artists’ group Cercle et Carré in 1929. With his wife and young daughter Martha, Daura made his first trip to the United States in 1934–35. The family returned to Europe for several years before settling in Louise’s native Virginia in 1939. Daura served as chair of art at Lynchburg College (1945–46) and taught at Randolph-Macon Women’s College from 1946 to 1953. He painted full time from then on at his studio in Rockbridge Baths, Virginia.

Daura’s works can be found in numerous museums throughout the United States and Europe, including the San Diego Museum of Art, San Antonio Museum of Art, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya and Musée National d’Art Moderne–Centre Georges Pompidou. In addition, Daura’s former house and studio in the picturesque French village of Saint-Cirq Lapopie is now a lively artists’ residence, the Maisons Daura.

The Daura collection at the Georgia Museum of Art continues to expand through gifts and acquisitions. Recently, the museum purchased “View of Saint-Cirq-Lapopie,” a painting that offers a glimpse of the quaint scenery of the French countryside and conveys Daura’s affection for his adoptive country.

Daura’s exhibition history can be found here.