WOMEN in the ZULOAGA COLLECTION
From July 19, 2024 to September 29, 2024
Exhibition organized by the ZULOAGA FOUNDATION in collaboration with Estepona City Council
INTRODUCTION
Since the beginning of the 19th century, the Zuloaga family has been buying books, weapons, decorative arts, paintings and sculptures. Initially, this collection was intended to inspire new creations by this saga of artists, but a century and a half ago some of these pieces were shown to the public; first in the Kontadorekua tower in Eibar and later in the Zuloaga museums in Zumaya and Pedraza. Since the end of the 20th century, the family has been organizing exhibitions and for some years now, through the “Art for All” project, the Zuloaga Foundation has organized large exhibitions and other traveling exhibitions throughout Spain.
With this exhibition on a female theme, we pay tribute to the women who have contributed to the formation, preservation and dissemination of this collection. An exhibition discourse in which we show the collecting work of the members of the family through a selection of artists who, over the last seven centuries, have captured different areas of the social situation of women.
ANCIENT RÉGIME
Since ancient times, the Bible and the most influential philosophical texts have justified discrimination against women. A subordination somewhat attenuated by the figure of the Virgin Mary and the saints, female subjects of the arts. In 13th century Castile, the ‘Siete Partidas’ of King Alfonso X ‘the Wise’ provided somewhat less burdensome legislation. From 1789, the French Revolution frustrated the hopes of the women who fought for it; and the Napoleonic Code caused a setback in all the countries it inspired.
During the 19th century, advances in political rights did not extend to women, as unions decided to sacrifice their labour rights in favour of workers. Even so, European women sought subtle means of gaining spaces of freedom.
SOCIO-POLITICAL ADVANCES
In the 19th century, literary, musical and artistic creations created myths of sexual freedom such as Carmen, Madame Bovary or Manet’s Olympia. They were precursors of the suffragette movement, while many bourgeois women began to go out alone, become educated and take on jobs. From 1906, some European women began to be able to vote; a trend that accelerated after the end of the First World War, as millions of women took on men’s jobs in addition to taking care of their homes.
Paradoxically, in 1931 the Second Spanish Republic allowed some women to be elected as deputies; but it did not allow all Spanish women to vote until two years later. In France, women did not get to vote until 1946. In art, during the 20th century, women artists emerged, and the iconography of women also expanded.
CLOSER TO EQUALITY
The fight for political equality has continued in Europe until recently: Swiss women did not vote until 1971 and women in Liechtenstein until 1984. Meanwhile, the presence of women in government bodies has not become normal until the beginning of the 21st century. In other areas of power, such as senior management in companies, women still play a secondary role. Greater social awareness against discrimination has normalised the presence of women in many areas and raised awareness of violence in the family and professional spheres. This improvement is helped by the presence of women in the judiciary, education, the media and the arts. They are now the majority among the directors of museum institutions and cultural public officials.
THE STAGES OF WOMEN’S LIFE
For most of history, the stereotype of the adult, beautiful woman dominated artistic iconography; it was the figure associated with the Virgin Mary, saints and aristocratic ladies. In the 19th century, the upper bourgeoisie became the main patrons of artists. Despite photography, some asked for their children to be painted and their dead to be drawn (something more common among artists themselves). The growing economic independence of wealthy bourgeois women and their social assertiveness led to a growing number of adult and elderly women requesting to be portrayed. Ignacio Zuloaga and other regenerationist painters represented elderly women as guardians of local identities.
FAVOURED AND DISADVOURED WOMEN
Until the 19th century, portraits of disadvantaged women were rare, appearing in landscapes or costumbrist paintings. The portrayed women were usually wealthy ladies, often posing in their social space: the living room. Women in search of their independence were represented by artists walking alone or even wearing men’s clothes.
The myth of Carmen and the taste for orientalism fostered the iconography of some marginalized women, such as the case of gypsies. In the cities, the proliferation of prostitutes and ‘kept’ women favoured their being painted in worldly environments, as well as the proliferation of the female nude. The typical costumes of peasants and fisherwomen and their way of life were adopted as symbols of national identity by some painters at the end of the 19th century, who painted them working.
DRESSED AND NAKED
A woman’s clothing, along with her jewellery, has been the most visible element of her social status and that of her husband. For this reason, artistic representation has carefully captured something so symbolic; both in the great lady, as in the village woman, the prostitute or the beggar. Since the mid-nineteenth century, the growing secularism and relaxation of customs allowed nude figures (almost exclusively women) to stop being protected by biblical scenes or Greek myths. In addition, the proliferation of prostitutes provided artists with abundant models with which to produce erotic paintings for which there was a considerable demand. Already in the twentieth century, some brave women decided that they wanted to be remembered by showing their nudity, as a gesture of freedom of choice.
SAINTS AND VIRGINS
Saints and the many devotions to the Virgin Mary have been the main subject of art about women until well into the 19th century. Although the main objective was to encourage prayer, encouraging Christian concentration, the figures were often dressed in habits foreign to the era and social condition of the character in question.
As in other Catholic religion collecting sagas, the Zuloagas have been collecting a wide range of religious iconography since the 19th century, sometimes following the taste of the time and other times as a way of safeguarding heritage.
THE ZULOAGA WOMEN
Since time immemorial, wives, mothers and grandmothers have been the collectors and transmitters of family histories and traditions. This has been the case of the Zuloaga family, in which – in addition – some women have not only contributed to the conservation and dissemination of the family collection; they have also been protagonists of the acquisitions, going so far as to form their own collections. In this room some of them are portrayed from the end of the 19th century to the present day. As an example of female collections, we show pieces from some of the collections of Valentine Dethomas, wife of Ignacio Zuloaga and passionate collector with her own taste and resources.
Goya. Disasters of War. MAPFRE Collections
November 18, 2023 - March 31, 2024
Exhibition organized by FUNDACIÓN MAPFRE in collaboration with Estepona City Council
Charles Baudelaire, The Comic and the Caricature
Diario Le Present, 1857
Francisco de Goya y Lucientes was born in 1746 in Fuendetodos, Zaragoza. From a very young age he studied with José Luzán, who introduced him to the art of engraving, through the prints that he provided him to practice in the art of drawing. Goya’s work is the fruit of constant experience and reflection, the product of his enlightened reformism, which opposed the traditionalism strongly rooted in Spanish society. Unlike many of his contemporaries, the Aragonese artist left us a deeply lucid and conscious testimony of his time, as we will be able to see throughout the exhibition that we are presenting.
In 1808, Francisco de Goya turned 62. By then he had already been named painter to the king and first chamber painter together with his colleague Mariano Salvador Maella. Although his deafness and deteriorating health had forced the artist to resign from his position as director of Painting at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, he remained honorary director of this institution. Since 1800, Francisco de Goya lived with his wife, Josefa Bayeu, at number 15 Calle Valverde in Madrid. Of his seven children, only Francisco Javier survived, married to Gurmesinda Goicoechea y Lagarza, with whom he had a son, Mariano, born in 1806.
On March 17, 1808, the Aranjuez Mutiny took place in Spain, which led to the abdication of King Charles IV in favor of his son Ferdinand VII and his flight to France. These events, in the context of the Napoleonic Wars, would be the starting point of one of the worst episodes in the history of Spain: the Peninsular War. This conflict pitted the Spanish people against the French army between 1808 and 1814.
The violence that Goya witnessed during the Peninsular War prompted the artist to return to drawings, sketches and prints, an activity that he had somewhat abandoned since he made Los Caprichos in 1799. This type of work, of a private nature, constitutes for the painter an effective method through which to express the pain and anguish he feels in the face of war events and their consequences on the civilian population. Although he did not publish them during his lifetime, surely due to the political situation, as his critical view of the conflict would have clashed with the commemorative wishes of the monarch Ferdinand VII, we know of a complete, bound edition, which he gave to his friend Ceán Bermúdez before his departure for Bordeaux in 1824. On the handwritten cover of this album one can read: «Fatal consequences of the bloody war in Spain with Buonaparte. And other emphatic whims, in 85 prints. Invented, drawn and engraved, by the original painter D. Francisco de Goya y Lucientes. In Madrid». The exact chronological limits of the series’ execution are unknown, but it is usually dated between 1810, the date that appears in three of the prints, and 1815, which coincides with the return of Ferdinand VII to the throne.
The Disasters of War are made up of 80 titled and numbered etching plates with some drypoint and wash additions, printed in black ink. In 1870, Paul Lefort acquired two more prints, which completes the series with 82 etchings, however, these were never included in the seven editions that are preserved. The fourth edition, which is part of the Fundación MAPFRE Collections, was produced in 1906 at the Calcografía Nacional. The print run was limited to 275 copies, on quality laid cream paper and very dark black ink.
The set of prints is usually divided into three parts: the first two [Disasters 1 to 64] constitute the “disasters of war” per se, while the third, the so-called “emphatic caprices” [Disasters 65 to 80], of a more allegorical nature, are understood as a political reflection on the absolutist government of Ferdinand VII after the end of the war and the withdrawal of the French troops.
Unlike other prints of the period, which highlight the heroism of the contenders and the din of battle, the Aragonese artist focuses on the point of view of the victims, something unprecedented until then in the history of painting. The victims and their suffering, but also political criticism, are the protagonists of these prints. Goya thus seems to invite the viewer to reflect, as he has not only captured the events that occurred during a specific war, the War of Independence, but he also announces and draws our attention to all wars and their barbarity, those of the past and those to come, which occur and continue to occur in different places around the world.
Aguafuerte, aguada, punta seca, buril y bruñidor
«Fatal consequences of the bloody war in Spain with Buonaparte. And other emphatic caprices, in 85 prints. Invented, drawn and engraved by the original painter D. Francisco de Goya y Lucientes. In Madrid», is the handwritten title that can be read on the only copy that Francisco de Goya made during his lifetime of the prints that «narrated» the events that occurred during the Spanish War of Independence (1810-1814) and that the Royal Academy of San Fernando printed for the first time in 1863 under the title Disasters of War. Thanks to that Album, which the Aragonese gave to his friend Ceán Bermúdez just before his departure for Bordeaux in 1824, and which is now kept in the British Museum in London, the process that Goya followed when creating this important collection has been reconstructed. In it, the Aragonese artist offers a critical and personal view of the consequences of the war, very far from the propagandistic images of this type of events that had been made until then.
The only date that is known with certainty in relation to the Goya series of the war is 1810, which appears in three of the twenty-four signed plates that have reached us: Curarlos y a otra [Disaster 20], Tanto y Más [Disaster 22] and Caridad [Disaster 27]. A year earlier the artist had traveled to Zaragoza at the invitation of General Palafox to have first-hand knowledge of the siege of the city. Although the rest of the plates in the series are not dated, given the subjects they deal with, it is believed that Goya produced the series between 1810 and 1815.
The Disasters of War are made up of 80 titled and numbered etched plates with some drypoint and wash additions, printed in black ink. In 1870, Paul Lefort acquired two more prints, which completes the series with 82 etchings, however, these were never included in the seven editions that are preserved. The fourth edition, which is part of the MAPFRE Foundation Collections, was produced in 1906 at the Calcografía Nacional. The print run was limited to 275 copies, on quality laid cream paper and very dark black ink.
The set of prints is usually divided into three parts: the first two [Disasters 1 to 64] constitute the “disasters of the war” themselves, while the third, the so-called “emphatic whims” [Disasters 65 to 80], of a more allegorical nature, are understood as a political reflection on the absolutist government of Ferdinand VII after the end of the war and the withdrawal of French troops.
In the Disasters of War Goya inaugurates a strikingly modern theme for his time, which he had already outlined in the paintings of The 2nd of May 1808 in Madrid and 3rd of May 1808 in Madrid: the shooting of Madrid patriots; the massacre of the civilian population, the death of citizens who are not guilty of the events that take place. There are no references in the prints to political issues, nor to the reasons why these individuals fight, there are no flags, no insignia, no shields. The viewer knows what is happening, but there are no specific references to what happened in the engravings.
The collection is presented with a print that acts as a frontispiece: Sad presentiments of what is to come [Disaster 1], in which a man kneeling in the darkness extends his arms and looks at the sky, which is followed, up to number 48, by a succession of scenes of executions, clashes between factions, massacres, escapes, etc. Disaster 44 has at its bottom the inscription I saw it, with which the artist seems to draw attention to the truthful nature of the scene and, by extension, to the rest of those he represents throughout the series. Goya was able to attend some of the events that we see in the prints, although what they seem to show is rather a general vision of barbarism. Women will also play a representative role in this one, appearing in several of the prints and who for the first time are treated not as passive beings, but as having an active role in the conflict. This is the case of What courage! [Disaster 7], There is no more time [Disaster 19], or You can’t look [Disaster 26], to name a few examples.
Aguafuerte, aguada, punta seca, buril y bruñidor
Aguafuerte, aguada, punta seca, buril y bruñidor
From the 1949 Disaster onwards, Goya’s series left aside specific scenes of death and focused on compositions that narrate the consequences of the war for the civilian population. In this type of print, the horizontal composition and even the centralisation of the protagonists prevail; architectural motifs also play an expressive role and sometimes indicate that the events take place in an urban world, as occurred in some of the prints from the first part. This space is sufficiently indefinite that it is impossible to locate specific places. The prints in this group, dedicated above all to the hunger that devastated Madrid after the war, usually have titles that allude to this situation: Charity of a woman [Disaster 49], The worst thing is to ask [Disaster 55], What is the use of a cup? [Disaster 59], are just some of them. Here too Goya universalises the motifs and moves away from the anecdote. It invites the viewer to reflect once again on issues that have been and will continue to be so, although until now they had never been represented in the way in which the Aragonese does: wars, any war, entail and are the product of unreason and barbarism, there are no heroes in this type of events, but individuals who suffer. And after them, the past and those to come, there is only desolation, hunger, misery, corruption and death.
In the first part of the collection, in which Goya depicts the horrors of war, he does not hide his critical sense towards institutions that, like the church, played a prominent role in the events. But the Emphatic Caprices provide much more content in this respect. The animals, tightrope walkers and more or less deformed characters constitute the representation of the absolute, of the political and ecclesiastical power that Goya rejects.
This third part of the series is undoubtedly related to the book by the poet Giambattista Casti, Gli animali parlanti, which was translated into Spanish in 1813 and which Goya knew, since he made a drawing of the writer that is now preserved in the Lázaro Galdiano Museum in Madrid. In that work Casti criticised the abuse of power, corruption, favouritism, hypocrisy, the suppression of freedoms or fanaticism, in a work in which all the characters are animals. These animals appear mixed with human beings in the Caprichos enfáticos and the Italian book allows us to better understand their meaning.
As in the previous ones, in this case the prints do not follow a chronological and linear order but are deeply allegorical. Ignorance and superstition are the protagonists of the first two prints: Strange devotion [Disaster 66] and This is no less so [Disaster 67]. Political criticism is addressed in They do not know the way [Disaster 70], an engraving that shows a line of civil prisoners and friars who could easily be liberal political detainees, supporters of the Constitution of 1812. In reference to political and clerical power, but of a symbolic nature, it would be worth mentioning Se defensa bien [Disaster 78], Farándula de charlatanes [Disaster 75] or Que se rompe la Cuerda [Disaster 77]. The last ones maintain an allegorical character. The Truth Died [Disaster 79] precedes What if He Resurrected? [Disaster 80], in which all hope that this event could occur is called into question by the series of characters surrounding the truth, specifically by an individual who, wielding a club, tries to prevent it.
The deformation of the characters in these last prints, their gestures and features anticipate the witches and wizards that Goya will carry out in the Witches’ Sabbath of the Black Paintings. A deformation and metamorphosis that find their reason for being in the grotesque.
Aguafuerte, punta seca y buril
Aguafuerte, aguada, punta seca, buril y bruñidor
Living in Painting: Spanish Art in the Carmen Thyssen Collection
From April 5 to September 25, 2023
These words by Baroness Carmen Thyssen summarise the private fascination with an art lived through emotion and sensory experience, which the works in her collection also reveal publicly to those who contemplate them. If, as the philosopher Walter Benjamin said, the collector seems to see through the objects in his collection, the viewer, when contemplating them without owning them, does so the other way around, hoping to discover the collector hidden behind his treasures.
With more than forty paintings, this exhibition invites the visitor to enter into this game of mirrors, which will show them a passionate search for beauty in nature and in the intimacy of everyday life, through more than a century of Spanish art, in which Carmen Thyssen has focused her gaze on genres traditionally considered “minor”, such as landscape and costumbrismo, the scene, however, of the most vivid exploration of the world by countless modern masters.
The heir and continuator, but also complementary, to the thematic and chronological lines that have defined the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection since its inception in the first decades of the 20th century, the Baroness’ collection, formed from an extensive collection of works bequeathed by her husband, Baron Hans Heinrich (1921-2002), is, above all, a faithful reflection of the tastes of its owner. Thus, since the late 1980s, Carmen Thyssen has assembled a collection that is recognisable today by its marked personality. In it, the vindication of Spanish art, and above all of Catalan and Andalusian painting from the 19th and 20th centuries, occupies a very prominent place and gives it its uniqueness.
As you walk through this exhibition, your gaze also crosses paths with those of all the previous owners of the works, collectors, dealers, artists and fine art enthusiasts who had the fleeting fortune to enjoy them in the privacy of their homes, galleries and studios. It has always been the aspiration of the successive owners of the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection to ensure that these experiences do not remain confined to that private sphere, and exhibitions such as this one fulfil that desire to share the passion of a life surrounded by art.
Evocation and reality
From Romanticism to the Dawn of Modernity
Confronting the view from Estepona in 2023 with the unspoiled nature that the German painter Fritz Bamberger, the author of the view that opens this exhibition, was able to contemplate in this same place in the mid-19th century, begins an artistic journey under the sign of an incessant search for renewal. The fifty years of Spanish art that this first section reviews thus start from an evoked reality, reworked by the painter’s imagination, until reaching, passing through various naturalistic experiences, the creative freedom that anticipates the rupture of the avant-garde movements.
The romantic nature, enveloped in a halo of dreaminess, warm lights and overwhelming atmosphere of Bamberger and Eugenio Lucas Velázquez, will give way to a timid naturalism in Lluís Rigalt, Ramon Martí Alsina or Modest Urgell, announcing a growing concern to represent the reality seen with fidelity and atmospheric realism. In these first realistic attempts, Mariano Fortuny’s stay in Morocco marked an unprecedented impulse and a great novelty, in a painting saturated with the intense North African light and with agile and vibrant brushstrokes.
The frequent contacts of the Spanish artists with a Paris that became a centre of irradiation of modernity towards all of Europe would allow a gradual introduction of the impressionist experiences, still tentative in Eliseu Meifrèn, but which traced the path towards the open-air painting that Joaquín Sorolla would take to an international summit for Spanish art.
In Catalonia, the most decisive commitment to the new emerges with Ramón Casas and Santiago Rusiñol, with the sober realism they paint in Paris and with the studies of sunlight they do in Barcelona and Sitges, in paintings where the painting itself becomes the protagonist above the represented subject, announcing a free art that the following generations will consolidate.
Beyond realism, on the border with the first avant-garde movements, Joaquim Mir turns the cliffs of Mallorca into a colourful delirium, with brushstrokes that seem to slide down the walls and that, definitively overcoming the naturalistic vision, influence the expression and a deeply emotional perception of the landscape.
Renewal and avant-garde
From Noucentisme to Pop Art
The collection of paintings that make up this section reveals Carmen Thyssen’s tastes as a collector: her preference for certain genres, such as landscapes or still lifes, and for the most colourful, advanced and cosmopolitan artistic currents.
We begin our tour with some of the leading works of Noucentisme, a reformist artistic trend that emerged in Catalonia in the early years of the 20th century. Its ideology, a synthesis of classicism and modernity, promoted the harmonious union between man and nature. By Joaquim Sunyer, its most distinguished painter, we show Mediterráneo, a foundational piece of the movement.
Paris was the main reference for the most modern Spanish artists in the first decades of the last century, fundamental for the promotion of their respective careers. In an environment influenced by the emergence of the avant-garde, painting became decidedly anti-academic and followed its own rules. It was the triumph of subjectivity in a painting devoid of moral lessons. This new aesthetic sensitivity can be seen in the different proposals of Josep de Togores, Francisco Iturrino, Celso Lagar, Pere Torné Esquius, Francisco Bores and Josep Amat.
A prominent vector in the Spanish artistic renewal was Dau al Set. Faced with the general apathy of the national artistic panorama during Franco’s regime, creators such as Modest Cuixart, Antoni Tàpies and Joan Ponç proposed an original way of representing the world, through a language dominated by magic and symbolism.
The exhibition also features the powerful paintings of the legendary group of artists who came together in Madrid under the name of El Paso. The most radical informalist avant-garde of the 1950s is embodied in the creations of Luis Feito and Antonio Saura.
In this very advanced environment, we find other interesting individualities, the love of material and the lyricism of Ràfols-Casamada, the experimental painting of Antoni Clavé or the disparate group of pieces signed by three magnificent figurative artists: Amalia Avia, María Antonia Dans and Menchu Gal. Finally, pop art represents the playful vein of art that interests Carmen Thyssen so much. The works of Eduardo Úrculo and Antonio de Felipe emphasize the voluptuousness of forms or the graphic nature of mass culture.