Reus,
Last year 2024 marked, among other various centenaries – for years converted into more or less profitable exhibition opportunities – a century and a half since the death of Mariano Fortuny i Marsal, born in Reus in 1838, and the occasion has served museums and Catalan art centers to revisit the production of what was considered one of the best painters of this region during the 19th century, although his critical fortune has not been static. These samples are facilitated by the fact that this author is very well represented in the Catalan collections – the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya. MNAC has four of its most significant compositions: The Battle of Tetouan, The Print Collector, The Odalisque and The vicarage-, a circumstance in which the recovery work of Joaquim Folch i Torres, who was director of the old Museu d’Art of Catalonia, in the twenties and thirties, had a lot to do with it.
In relation to those divergences of criticism, one of the purposes of the program of this anniversary is to contribute to overcoming clichés or prejudices that, on the other hand, also affect many nineteenth-century artists: beyond influencing their preciousness and their technical virtuosity in paintings, drawings and engravings, the proposal 150 Maria Fortunysponsored by the Generalitat and supported by a good number of institutions, wants to provoke reflections based on the thematic issues it addressed, linked to issues of current debate such as war, gender stereotypes, emotional crises (in artists and not alone), the frustration of creators when it comes to materializing their ideas, colonialism, collecting, the notion of luxury or changes in taste and aesthetic ideas. Another of the intended attractions is to pictorially tour the settings that were part of the sentimental and artistic geography of Fortuny (Reus, Barcelona, Madrid, Granada, Rome, Paris, Porticio, Seville, Tetouan and Tangier) and its attention to very diverse genres, from landscape to costumbrismo, including history painting.
In order to leave some room for surprise, attention is also paid to some less widespread facets, such as its tendency to leave some pieces unfinished, including those that occupy an important space in the configuration of the rooms of the MNAC’s permanent collection and part of the collection of the Reus Art Museum. He did not finish, among other compositions, the aforementioned Battle of Tetuán, Landscape of Granada, Carmen Bastián either Moroccan Ferradorand it is a particularly striking trait in his case, due to his constant aspiration for excellence and his self-demand, aspects of his personality that would explain, in part, his inability to complete certain images. Surely this theoretical limitation makes it more attractive: it forces us to ask ourselves the reasons why a painter who craved the most absolute perfection renounced it (as it was conceived) and opted for the path of “abandonment”; On this path we will be able to review certain stereotypes, archetypes and conventions.
His love for landscape must also be taken into account, when referring to a studio painter who did not usually deal with nature: he did not cultivate landscaping in its most frequent dimension, but he did incorporate the environment into his works; In many of his canvases, although especially in his paper creations, one can perceive the role that atmospheric effects played in the construction of his language. we return to Battle of Tetouan: He conceived it as a study painting, but it was the result of a preliminary creative process, in which preparatory watercolor studies, carried out outdoors, determined the prominence of the foliage (and subtracted weight from the initially planned military epic).
And we must not lose sight of his engravings; He was considered the best artist of the 19th century, after Goya, for his expertise in that technique: the etchings preserved in Barcelona and Reus attest that he certainly did not consider that painting had primacy over the rest of the disciplines, and that compositional solutions that he found in this medium he applied in the rest.
Precisely the drawings and prints treasured by the Museum of Reus and the MNAC focus, in the first space and until February, the exhibition “Marià Fortuny. A biography about paper”, which emphasizes its close link with said medium; Drawing was one of his greatest creative drives and even a hallmark: he achieved identical solvency with any technical instrument and any paper surface. He sought the synthesis of certain features of the ancient masters with an imagery close to fantasy.
The same center hosts, until December of this year, “Fortuny, l’observació de la natura”, the fundamental exhibition of the program curated by Francesc Quílez Corella. It will delve, as we said, into his peculiar treatment of the landscape for his purposes and his inclination for the unfinished, but also into the artistic effects of his crises, sometimes derived from the need to accept the laws of a market that forced him to adapt. to the tastes and demand of dealers who only wanted it to manufacture standardized products of Fortuny factory.
Both exhibitions have been completed, since last December, with the celebration of various activities that began in Reus and will continue, in 2025, inside and outside Spain, in response to the international projection of Fortuny. Conferences or round tables will be offered throughout this year by the MNAC in Barcelona, the Palace of Carlos V in Granada, the MUREC in Almería, the Royal Academy of Spain in Rome, the Prado Museum, the Lázaro Galdiano and the Ateneo in Madrid. , the Cervantes Institutes in Paris, Tangier, Tetouan and Naples, and the Palazzo Museo Fortuny in Venice.
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