José Gallego, a face for teachers

Santander,

The Cantabrian artist José Gallego says that a few years ago he was walking through the Museum of Fine Arts of Valencia and was surprised by the forcefulness of the gaze in the self-portrait of Velázquez that belongs to the collections of that center: dated only a few years before Las Meninasin 1650, is the only composition of this genre that is accepted to have come from the hand of the Sevillian, he carried it out in Rome and in it it is presented with a short bust and white collar. In any case, we said, what caught his attention was his look, about which he had to take some notes.

Not much later, he visited the National Gallery in London with his daughter and two other self-portraits came out to meet him, by Murillo and Carel Fabritius. In the first, dated around 1670 (when the Andalusian was of a similar age to Velázquez in the previous piece, fifty years old), we see the painter inserted in a fictitious frame, putting forward his right hand, dressed in black and with his collar we call Walloon. Once again, what Gallego especially noticed was his eyes, which convey self-confidence and a certain relaxation; An inscription reveals that he made this painting for fulfill wishes and prayers of his children. Very different is the attitude that Fabritius would show in his painting (it is impossible to know with certainty that it is a self-portrait, but it most likely is). This talented apprentice of Rembrandt would perform it in the last year of his brief life, wearing a soldier’s breastplate – his master also portrayed himself like this – and his gaze is unmistakably intense; For the Santander author, it is as if the figure had smiled at someone at a moment just before. On this occasion, whether or not this was a self-portrait was possibly not considered important at the time: the images of types or characters from different professions, known as tronieswere very popular then and artists used themselves as models to paint.

Still two other episodes led Gallego to delve into the portraits of great painters: the memory of an effigy of Ribera that was part of his father’s stamp collection and that of some words by John Ashbery, about a work by Parmigianino, in the Michelena bookstore in Pontevedra: There is in that fixed gaze a combination of tenderness, amusement and regret.

The exhibition that this author presents until January 2025 at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Santander and Cantabria is born from the desire to delve deeper into those sensations that the artists’ gazes hold in their portraits. MORE: it is called “Transitive Drawings” and consists of eighty works on paper made with graphite pencil; They leave the intimacy of their workshop for the first time and show the faces, filtered by their personal vision, of creators of Mannerism and Baroque. The eras have not been chosen by chance; As Gallego remembers, in those moments New genres and new painting techniques were used, while modern individuality was being developed..

Many will be familiar with their names and their work, but we have not always gotten to see their faces brought to canvas; This author presents them to us on paper, emphasizing the complexity of their identities (everyone’s) and the great deepening of the enigmas of the human condition undertaken by many of the baroque artists represented here. In none of these drawings do possible accessory elements distract the viewer, beyond a necklace, hat or fragment of clothing: Gallego has preferred to focus on the psychology perhaps captured in the images that we know of them. It is always the looks and gestures that add intensity to these compositions.

Spectators may have the feeling that certain relationships are generated between them, in addition to feeling themselves, as observers receiving glances, being appealed to. And they will surely discover unknown names, because authors without the possibility of loss (Rubens, Jordaens, Clara Peeters, Rembrandt, Gerrit Dou, a possible Vermeer, Van Dyck, Poussin, Rigaud, Tiziano, Velázquez, Pontormo, Tintoretto, Veronese, Sofonisba Anguissola, Lavinia Fontana, Bernini, Annibale Carracci, Caravaggio, Guido Reni, Lucas Jordán, Carducho, El Greco or Velázquez himself) are joined by others who can be discoveries for many, such as Maria Schalcken, Johannes Gumpp, The Tintoretta (Marietta Robusti), Arcangela Paladini, Paulus Moreelse, Maarten van Heemskerck or Jusepe Nicolás Martínez y Lurbez.

Gallego’s is a tribute to those who knew how to detect and show their own and other people’s interiority in their most subtle signs: through the eyes, which, as the late Calvo Serraller pointed out, were the most obvious window of the brain.