 SOLANAJosé Gutiérrez Solana Madrid 1886 – 1945 Self Potrait |
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| THE CIRCLE OF THE CAFÉ POMBO
(1920) (La Tertulia del Café Pombo) Oil on canvas (162 x 211.5 cm.) Reina Sofía National Museum Emblematic panel depicting one of the intellectual gatherings so typical in first decades of 20th century. Action takes place in one of typical “cafés” of Madrid, the Café Pombo, that gaves name to the picture. Before belonging to the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, the painting was property of Ramón Gómez de la Serna, who is portrayed in the middle of the composition. This multiple portrait make us to know the image of some intellectuals at that time, Manuel Abril, Tomás Borrás, José Bergamín, José Cabrero, Mauricio Bacarisse, Pedro Emilio Coll, Salvador Bartolozzi, including Solana himself among them in a marvellous self portrait. It emphasizes the sobriety of portrayed and the dark colors that use, that so characteristic is of the artist. |
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| THE CHORUS GIRLS
(1921) (Las Coristas) Oil on canvas (176 x 213 cm.) Museum of Modern Art of Barcelona A scene the one that represents Solana here, in that it shows his personal vision to us of the atmospheres that as much he likes to reflect: the daily moments, the customs and manners of the slums, taverns and spectacles. It exhibits daily scenes portraying anonymous faces to give them to life and expression, to which the pictorial technique is combined, giving a skillful result to the assembly of the work. |
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| THE VISIT OF THE BISHOP
(1926) (La Visita del Obispo) Oil on canvas (161 x 211 cm.) Museum of Modern Art of Barcelona Another compostion in the same line of the first one -The Circle of Café Pombo- technically speaking. Dark colors and soberness in faces are used to make his portrait compositions. The subject is once more the reflection of a daily situation in Spain at the time, a theme that Solana presented in so many diverse ways throughout his career. |
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| THE PROCESSION OF DEATH
(1930) (La Procesión de la Muerte) Oil on canvas (210 x 123 cm.) Reina Sofía National Museum This work reflects the obsession that Solana had respect to death and everything around it. The work happens to be comprised in the Reina Sofia National Museum in 1945. A clear influence of the ” Vanitas ” of Loyal Valdés and of the baroque compositions of this type in which the vital idea of tempus fugit and the evidence of the arrival of the death are reflected. This subject will be repeated in other several works, as “The Mirror of the Death ” (1929) or “The Osario ” (1931). This “macabre” tendency, that he also will describe with details in his writings, causes that this style has been classified particularly like “tenebrous Expresionism”. |
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| THE MEETING OF THE PHARMACY
(1934) (La Reunión de la Botica) Oil on canvas (160 x 210 cm.) Museum of Modern Art of Barcelona Following the trend of reflecting his vital atmospheres, he paints this other panel. It shows another aspect of popular and daily Spain and he uses for it the same technique that in “The Circle of the Café Pombo” years before, though more perfect both in the processing of colors and in the one of the figures. |
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| THE RAGMEN
(1926) (Los Traperos) Oil on canvas (160 x 210 cm.) Fine Arts Museum of Santander Solana resides long seasons in Cantabria, from where he takes new forms and he contributes greater colorful to his compositions, although always within its dull and contrasted ranges, to give finishing of tragic character. He begins his themes of local and costums works with this picture, of clear critic to the society; another significant work in which this subject appears is “The Ramp of Puertochico” (1943). The way in which the panel has been painted is of “fast sketch”, in which it portrays anonymous characters. Clear reflection of marginal atmospheres, the reality of the moment, the Spain of those days. The black and yellow colors create a pessimistic composition that floods the faces of each one of the presonajes and recreates a tragic atmosphere. |
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