Jacinto Grau

• Name — Jacinto Grau • Born — 1877 • Died — 14 August 1958 • Birthplace — Barcelona, Spain • Place of death — Buenos Aires, Argentina

Grau was born in Barcelona. He served as the Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of Loyalist Spain to Panama during the Spanish Civil War. Following the war he emigrated to Argentina, where he died in exile in 1958.

Grau published twenty-five plays over the course of fifty-five years. His most celebrated work is El señor de Pigmalión (1921), which remained relatively unknown in Spain during his lifetime, though it was successful in Europe and Latin America. Grau has stated that he writes plays 'with the greatest intensity possible within the limits of classical harmony'.:23-24 His work is 'anti-realistic', and heavily influenced by George Bernard Shaw, as well as Henrik Ibsen, Jean Anouihl and Buero Vallejo.:269-70 His contemporary critics 'universally' identified his theatre as avant-garde, though Grau 'scorned avant-garde theatre'. Modern scholars have identified him as a 'psychological idealist'.:23 He was nominated for a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1949.

• Play — Year Published — Year Premiered — Location Premiered • El Conde Alarcos — 1917 • El hijo pródigo — 1918 — 1918 • El Mismo daño — 1921 • El señor de Pigmalión — 1921 — 1923 — Charles Dullin's L'Atelier (Paris):135 • La Casa del Diablo — 1933 • En Ildaria • Entre Llamas • El Caballero Varona