A painter who captured Spain from a strange perspective

Ignacio Zuloaga was once as famous as Sorolla, but after his death the artist’s exploratory paintings fell out of favor.

Munich is the perfect place to exhibit the works of Ignacio Zuloaga (1870-1945). The city held an exhibition of 25 of his paintings between 1912 and 1913. Later, during World War II, on the direct orders of General Franco, the Spanish ambassador to Germany presented three works by the Basque-born artist to Hitler in Munich. This dubious honor did nothing to add to the artist’s posthumous reputation. The current exhibition is the first international retrospective of the man widely considered Spain’s greatest living artist even before Picasso. Until then, his only real competition was the Valencian-born master of light, Joaquín Sorolla. He was also a painter who benefited from America’s enthusiasm for Spain.

With more than 70 paintings housed in nine rooms, “Spanish Mythology” is a stunning showcase of the work of a self-taught artist who, on paper, was more qualified as a bullfighter than a painter. Scenes of his public life, painted when he was young in Paris, capture the beginning of his lifelong fascination with prostitutes from different societies and eras.In the style of Manet Opposite the Moulin Rouge (1890), completed the year after Cabaret first opened, shows a young woman, believed to be a prostitute, sitting alone at a cafe table, her face hidden from the viewer, but her clothing Blue feathers attract attention.French in Bizet’s time carmen (1875), fascinated by the archaic foreignness of Spanish customs. Zuloaga reversed his gaze, documenting the isolation and commercialization of modern life in Paris. Though he drew inspiration from the Louvre and his personal interactions with Gauguin, Degas, and Van Gogh, modernity had limited appeal for Zuloaga. He turned his back on Montmartre and immediately returned to his hometown. In his later portraits of female relatives with make-up resembling street workers, he appears to be mocking the imitation of cosmopolitan sophistication.

short doña mercedes (1899), Ignacio Zuloaga. Musee d’Orsay, Paris.Photo: © bpk/RMN – Grand
Palais/Hervé Lewandowski

Zuloaga’s work is often as dark as Sorolla’s is bright. Raised in the hills of the Basque Country, where the rain is as constant as the sun in Sorolla’s native Mediterranean coast, he created paintings with hues that testify to his dark view of Spain, its people, customs, and art. did. What caught my eye in a room in Munich that had a collection of works inspired by Spanish masters was short doña mercedes (1899), Doña holds a cylindrical glass bowl.A clear nod to Velasquez’s ideas. Las Meninas (1656), the artist’s reflections are included in the work. The Baroque fascination with the interplay of the real and the artificial is reproduced throughout the exhibition. bleeding christ (1911), a display representation of a procession with polychrome carvings typical of Spanish Easter parades, could at first glance be mistaken for an original depiction of the Crucifixion. Zuloaga’s tendency to imbue realistic scenes with non-realistic characteristics is evident in the vibrant greenery found in many of his landscape paintings, regardless of the local climate. This characteristic stylistic contradiction is particularly evident in his depictions of the arid central plains of Castile, revealing traces of El Greco’s influence as well as his upbringing in the rainy and green regions of Spain. I’m doing it.

bleeding christ (1911), Ignacio Zuloaga.Museo Nacional de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid

It seems fitting that the poster promoting the exhibition features an image of taurine. Zuloaga was a bullfighting enthusiast and remained sympathetic to the brutality of what was often referred to as Spain’s “national festival.” The museum’s largest room displays paintings from his time when Zuloaga lived in a gypsy community and trained as a bullfighter in a small town on the outskirts of Seville. Columbus’ famous departure from the city of Andalusia ushered in the world’s first transatlantic empire, but that empire gradually declined until Spain lost its last colonies outside Africa in the Spanish-American War in 1898. It reached its climax. In the second half of the show, the Generation of ’98, a group of intellectuals and writers who came of age in an atmosphere of national decline and catastrophe, is foregrounded, and the Castilian scenes are used as literary and visual references to the Spanish soul. It belongs to the metaphor. Alluding to Cervantes’ unfortunate Don Quixote, fiesta victims (1910) depicts an unusually emaciated old picador (a bullfighter’s mounted assistant) riding away from yet another local bullring in a bloody whisper. Humans and beasts alike are depicted pitifully.

fiesta victims (1910), Ignacio Zuloaga. Bilbao Museum. Photo: © Arte Ederren Bilboko Museoa –
Bilbao Museum

On the other hand, Zuloaga’s paintings do not suggest a clear solution to a cruel archaic country that is seemingly forever in decline. On the contrary, he sought to dignify the Castilian landscape by adopting the Italian portrait tradition of placing prominent figures against symbolic backgrounds. The earliest examples of this trend are: Portrait of Enrique Larreta (1912): The famous Argentine writer and art collector, who, like Zuloaga, has been around for 98 generations, is located against the backdrop of Avila’s medieval walls. There are parallels between Zuloaga’s rejection of the European vanguard in search of eternal Spanish symbols and sites and Franco’s bizarre attempts to revive the values ​​and triumphs of the country’s imperial past. can be seen. Still, the nuances of many of the other paintings on display demonstrate the artist’s focus on questioning, not just perpetuating, the myths and myths surrounding his homeland. Such ambiguity is not the preserve of many totalitarian regimes.

Portrait of Enrique Larreta (1912), Ignacio Zuloaga. Enrique Larreta de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires Museum of Spanish Art Collection.Photo: Eduardo Saperas

“Spanish Mythology: Ignacio Zuloaga (1870–1945)” will be on view at the Munich Museum until February 4. It was then held at the Busselius Kunst Forum in Hamburg from February 17th to May 26th.