Highlights from the Permanent Collection: The Still Lifes and Abstractions of Pierre Daura

This gallery highlights the Catalan-American artist Pierre Daura’s practice with a focus on his still lifes and his interest in abstraction.

Born in 1896 on the island of Menorca, Daura was a Catalan-American artist who painted in both Europe and America. Daura met his wife, Louise Heron Blair, in Paris in 1927. A Richmond, Virginia, native, she was studying art with Daura in Paris at the time; they married just a year later. In late 1929, Daura became involved in the founding of Cercle et Carré (“Circle and Square”), an artist’s group that had a large impact on his continued focus on abstraction. The Daura family relocated to Virginia in the 1940s, retreating from war-torn Europe. In Virginia, Daura taught art, first at Lynchburg College, where he chaired the art department, and then at Randolph-Macon Women’s College (later Randolph College). Daura died on January 1, 1976, and was buried alongside his wife in Rockbridge Baths, Virginia.

In 2003, the artist’s daughter, Martha Randolph Daura, generously gifted the Taubman Museum of Art a large collection of works by her father including watercolor and oil paintings of portraits, French and Virginian landscapes, and still lifes.