Rosario de Velasco: an Almeria claim

Almería,

Just a summer, for almost all of us, a good part of the compositions of Rosario de Velasco (Madrid, 1904-Barcelona, 1991) that showed the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum. To a large extent, that exhibition was the result of the efforts of her granddaughter, Toya Viudes de Velasco, for recovering those works of the artist whose track was lost: she collected about thirty paintings dated between twenty and forty -a set of illustrations for publications such as ABC, black and white either The spheremost representative of their assignment to the return to order, the current parallel to the new German objectivity and the Italian nineteenth that linked tradition (through their themes) and contemporaneity (in its forceful forms).

Among the obvious reference figures for the Madrid artist were both Giotto, Masaccio, Piero de la Francesca or Mantegna, Durero, Velázquez and Goya such as Chirico, Braque or Picasso. He was born from Velasco within a very traditional and religious family, and it was his teacher Fernando Álvarez de Sotomayor, a member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando and director of the Prado Museum twice, but she became aware that she had to open at the forefront and travel and travel with Maruja Mallo, Rosa Chacel or María Teresa León.

When he finished his studies, in 1924, he participated in the National Exhibition of Fine Arts in Madrid and began his foray into the Enlightenment. In the thirties he carried out his most important works -some introduced complex perspective forms or lifes of Cubist Cariz -and was part of collective and competitions that gave him success, such as Venice Biennial of 1936, but the rhythm of his exhibitions declined after the civil war. In the contest she was accused of Falangist and convicted of death; He was able to rescue her who would later be her husband, the doctor Javier Farrerons. The hardness of the postwar period and its tendency to figurative realism during the boom of abstraction motivated that it fell into a gradual forgetfulness.

This summer is the museum of contemporary Spanish realism. Murec de Almería in charge of reviewing his production, in a sample curated by the Toya Viudes de Velasco and Juan Manuel Martín Robles and organized by the Provincial Council and the Ibáñez Cosentino Art Foundation. It is called “between papers and canvases” and consists of paintings, illustrations and drawings, many from private funds and susceptible to lighting a tour of the trajectory of this author, when dating from its beginnings to the sixties; Their celebrated is not lacking Lavanderas (1934), presented at the National Exhibition of Fine Arts and emblem of his interest in Italian Renaissance; The Magdalenarecently restored; Woman with vegetables (1941) o Woman with towelthe latter rescued from a particular and equally restored collection. Both prove their willingness to offer female models beyond stereotypes, accentuating their own personality from monumentality.

We will also contemplate the large format canvases that make up the cycle The four stationswhich were in charge in the forties for the Castle Palacio de Magalia, in Ávila, where they still guard; in addition to serene and reddish landscapes inspired by the surroundings of Albarracín (Teruel) and some works never previously taught to the public, such as The boy and his dog (prior to 1953), Child with duck (of the thirty decade), Maria del Mar with flower and rake basket (1942) or Rosario with María del Mar (1944).

Rosario de Velasco. The boy and his dog, 1953

On behalf of her face less attended as a literary illustrator, her images have arrived in Almeria for THE BEAUTIFUL OF EVIL LOVE (1930) by María Teresa León or Dafnis and Cloe (1940), commissioned by Gustavo Gili; They stand out for their delicacy, their proximity to Art Decó and the good management of linear drawing. He also put strokes to Concha Espina or Elisabeth Mulder texts.