Julio Romero de Torres
Julio Romero de Torres (Córdoba, November 9, 1874-Ibidem, May 10, 1930) was a Spanish symbolist painter. Born into a family of artists, as a young man he made a regionalist painting, heir to the best Spanish tradition, to progressively adhere to the aesthetics of the generation of '98 and modernism, triumphant in Spain. Around 1908, his aesthetic led to a personal style that combined popular sentiment and genuine folklore, in a very Andalusian line full of refinement and charm. In his beginnings, together with Solana, Arteta and Ricardo Baroja, tries to reflect in his paintings a dramatic and rural Spain, compared to Sorolla, Sotomayor or Moreno Carbonero, with a more accommodating vision.
Romero de Torres stands out for his precise drawing in balanced compositions of bluish, greenish and, above all, black colors. He was also known for his flamenco and bullfighting themes, with a certain tribute to the popular copla.Three stages we can appreciate in the work of this modernist painter. An initial one, which would end in 1908. A central one that would end in 1916. And a final one, which would end with his death in 1930. His best valued work has been the painting Fuensanta, auctioned in 2007 for 1 17 million euros because it was the image of the 100 pesetas bill.
Biography
Seventh son of Rafael Romero Barros, costumbrista painter and curator of the Museum of Fine Arts of Córdoba, Julio Romero de Torres was born in Córdoba on November 9, 1874, in a home dedicated to the arts. His father was born in Moguer (Huelva) and in 1862 he arrived in the city of Córdoba as curator of the Museum of Paintings. He settled in a house attached to the museum, in the Plaza del Potro, together with his wife, the Sevillian Rosario de Torres Delgado. The eight children of the couple grew up in this environment, surrounded by works of art and by students from the School of Art and Music Conservatory, also installed in the same premises. Julio grew up there, along with his brothers, the painters Enrique Romero de Torres, two years older, and Rafael Romero de Torres, the eldest son, born in 1865, but died prematurely in 1898, at just thirty-three years of age.
Formation (1889-1895)
Julio Romero attends the Luis de Góngora Institute in the Cordovan capital. When he was ten years old, he was going to receive music and solfeggio classes in the Conservatory classrooms and studied painting and drawing at the Provincial School of Fine Arts run by his father, together with his brothers Rafael and Enrique. In 1889 he presented his first dated works, Arab Head or Arab Type on Horseback . In 1890, when he was barely 16 years old, he painted La huerta de Morales , which his father also painted. There is a clear paternal influence in both, due to the themes that he develops and the style, in which landscape painters and costumbristas are present, such as Jenaro Pérez Villaamil, Aureliano Beruete or Carlos de Haes.
In 1891 he began to collaborate with the «Almanac» of the Diario de Córdoba, with splendid drawings, sometimes together with his brothers (a collaboration that would continue until 1912). In 1892 he obtained the medal in the subject of Natural Drawing at the School of Fine Arts in Córdoba. The following year, he published for the first time in the Madrid magazine La Gran Vía . Later on he will illustrate poems by Manuel Reina and Salvador Rueda in it.
In 1895, Romero presented his work Look how pretty it was! at the National Exhibition of Fine Arts held in Madrid's Retiro. The painting obtains an honorable mention and is acquired by the State. The title is taken from the first verse of a famous soleá:
- Look how pretty it was!
- Look how pretty it was!
- It looked like the Virgin
- Utrera Consolation.
First prize went to Joaquín Sorolla, for his work They still say that fish is expensive!. The death of his father on December 1, 1895 greatly affects the family. His brother, Enrique, is forced to return to Córdoba permanently to fill the vacancy in the museum left by his father, being appointed conservator-restorer of the Provincial Museum.
In 1897 he decided to apply for a scholarship from the Spanish Academy in Rome, which had organized the contest under the theme: The anarchist and his family. Romero de Torres did not obtain the scholarship, although the following year he presented his gloomy portrait of an anarchist under the name Tranquil Conscience at the National Exhibition of Fine Arts, obtaining the third medal. His friends in Córdoba, aware of his success, prepared a small tribute for him on May 30, 1898. A few months later, in November, his brother Rafael died. That same year, in addition, he began as a poster artist painting the poster for the Fair of Our Lady of Health in Córdoba.
With his brother Enrique, he paints a fresco in the Círculo de la Amistad entitled Rosas en la balconada. He frequents characters from the world of bullfighting, such as Belmonte, El Gallo, Machaquito and paints the Portrait of the bullfighter Guerrita . He also entered the world of flamenco and met Pastora Imperio and La Niña de los Peines.
Marriage
On October 30, 1899, Romero de Torres married Francisca Pellicer López from Córdoba, a member of a family of creators. Her brother was the writer and playwright Julio Pellicer and his nephew, the painter Rafael Pellicer. Three children would be born from the marriage: Rafael, Amalia and María de los Ángeles.
In 1900 he did the illustrations for Andalusian Land, a text by Julio Pellicer, and he met Amalia Fernández Heredia, the model for Gypsy Muse. He paints a portrait of the Marquise de Viana. In 1902 he was appointed Full Professor of the Chair of Color, Drawing and Copy at the School of Fine Arts in Córdoba and in 1903 Associate Professor at the Higher School of Industrial Arts.
First stage (1900-1908)
Generation of '98
In 1903, Julio Romero traveled with his brother Enrique through Morocco. He paints La monta and Calle de Tangier , among other works, with an African-themed air. The following year he travels through France and the Netherlands. On his return he remains in Madrid. He frequents the Café de Levante, which he already visited on the occasion of its foundation the previous year, in the company of Valle-Inclán. He attends the sessions of the & # 34; Academy of modernist poetry & # 34; of the Machado brothers, and knows Pío Baroja, Pérez de Ayala, Alejandro Sawa, Antonio de Hoyos and Emilio Carrere. He coincides with colleagues and friends such as Zuloaga, Solana, Rusiñol, his countryman Mateo Inurria, Anglada Camarasa or Rodríguez Acosta. At the National Exhibition of Fine Arts he presents three works: Rosarillo , Olive Trees and Hours of Anguish . And he finished the murals in the Asunción de Porcuna parish. That year he is appointed corresponding academic of the Royal Academy of Córdoba.
Reading
Around 1902, Julio Romero painted Lectura, a genuinely personal painting. In the composition, we appreciate the absolute mastery of the young artist. In the image, a model with Andalusian airs is lying on the bed, with her head resting on her arm, and leaves a book abandoned on her bedspread. The painting is dominated by the reddish color of the coverlet and the off-whites of the young woman's dress. The footwear is barely suggested by some lines, on a dark background. On the left side of the composition, a small lamp on a wooden table, with modernist overtones.
Cordoba Friendship Circle
In 1903, the Círculo de la Amistad of Córdoba proposed, through the mouth of its director, Antonio Marín, six canvases to illustrate the primitive small hall of the entity. Romero makes five large murals dedicated to literature, music, poetry, sculpture and art. In light tones, in which blue predominates, the artist appears to us as a definitive modernist, inspired by the British school of the Pre-Raphaelites and with associations with the master Joaquín Sorolla. Over the years, and after its reform, the Circle moved the frescoes to the main staircase, which gave it the air of a Renaissance palace. The artist, who would have had the opportunity to discover during his 1904 trip to Paris and the Netherlands the work of Puvis de Chavannes or Catalan modernists and symbolists such as Ramón Casas, including Whistler's monochrome works, with a language allegorical seeks the representation of abstract ideas through female figures, the total work of art, from German romanticism. Romero de Torres achieves a minimal reference to reality with women of sensual materiality, although devoid of the slightest hint of eroticism or carnality, works imbued with an evanescent atmosphere. They suggest Platonic contemplation and poetic reverie more than the promises of the flesh. To all of which contributes a use of chromaticism in which positive colors that insist on immateriality are emphasized, such as whites and shades of blue, suggestive of peace, innocence, purity, harmony, serenity and infinity.
His friendship with the group of modernist writers, especially with Ramón María del Valle-Inclán and Manuel Machado, will influence his way of painting. The closed defense that authors such as Jacinto Benavente make of Romero de Torres gives an idea that his work was not only "modernist". Paintings such as Sacred Love and Profane Love, Altarpiece of Love and the trilogy made up of The Two Paths, Sin (1913) and La gracia (1915) bring his work closer to that of the Spanish modernists, a generation that overlaps with the generation of '98. At the same time, at this stage, Romero de Torres delves into feminine psychology, leading to his works the states of the female soul, its concerns and its search for human fulfillment, providing a vision in the face of discriminatory situations that women have suffered for centuries.
National Exhibition of Fine Arts
Julio Romero participates in the National Exhibition of Fine Arts in 1906. One of his works, Vividoras del amor, is rejected as immoral. Paradoxically, two years later, this same work was exhibited in London with great success. The theme of prostitution was not new in either literature or painting at the beginning of the XX century. The curse of Baudelaire and the symbolists was well known in Spain. Manuel Machado's first work gives us an idea of his presence in Spanish letters. In painting, Joaquín Sorolla owes White slavery (1897) and Gonzalo Bilbao, La esclava (1904). Romero de Torres deals with the subject on several occasions, and in all of them his social concern and not so much aesthetic concern is perceptible. With Love Lovers, the painter caused a monumental scandal at the 1906 National Exhibition of Fine Arts. What is surprising is that Gonzalo Bilbao, who was on the jury, shared such an opinion, when his painting, La esclava, from 1904, had the same subject matter and it is more than likely that it inspired the one by Romero de Torres. Some have even seen Romero's painting as an inspiration for Pablo Picasso himself in Las senoritas de Avignon (1907).
In 1907, he participated again in the Exhibition organized by the Círculo de Bellas Artes. Solana, Rusiñol and Regoyos also participate. Two of the works that she presents, Carmen and Rosario , are acquired by the Marchioness of Esquilache, which gives an idea that her work is beginning to interest the high Spanish society.
The gypsy muse
Carried out before his trip to Europe, with The Gypsy Muse (1907), Romero closes a stage. The work attends the National Exhibition of Fine Arts the following year, 1908. The painting, starring her model Amalia Fernández Heredia, obtains the gold medal of the exhibition. As was mandatory, the State acquired it to exhibit it at the Museum of Modern Art. However, the playwright and intellectual Jacinto Benavente publicly protests and affirms that a work of this nature should be hung in the temple of Spanish painting, the Prado Museum.
After the scandal, Rafael Cansinos-Asséns, one of the great promoters of ultraism, recalls in his memoirs his meeting with our painter:
One night we went to that café [Candelas], of which Romero was assiduous of Torres, the painter Cordoba, the creator of the Gypsy Musa, who had imposed with his paintings the kind of brunette, passionate and fatal woman. It was a great emotion for me to hear his "good nights" with an Andalusian accent and narrow his hand, wide and rough, of bullfighter.Rafael Cansinos-Asséns, The novel of a literatep. 176.
His friend, Ramón Mª del Valle-Inclán writes:
Romero de Torres knows that the essential truth is not the low truth that discovers the eyes, but the other that only discovers the spirit united to a hidden rhythm of emotion and harmony, which is the aesthetic enjoyment.Ramón Ma del Valle-Inclán: Romero de Torres.
Symbolism (1908-1915)
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In 1908, Romero traveled through Italy, France and the United Kingdom. He studies the Renaissance and is well versed in Italian primitives. In Britain, he admires the works of the Pre-Raphaelites. After the trip, the content of his work and the treatment of his brushwork changed radically. With influences like those of Titian in his work Sacred Love and Profane Love, Julio Romero begins a new phase, a cycle of paintings in which women become heroines. He leaves behind his works costumbristas or those of social concern from his early years, his romantic and modernist works from the Cordovan Casino, those in which his admiration for Joaquín Sorolla can be guessed, to now delve into the symbolist stage of it.
Sacred love and profane love
Around 1908, Julio Romero made Mystic Love and Profane Love, one of his works in which he delves into the duality of the human being. In the foreground, with a background of somber tones, a woman on the left wearing black, a woman on the right wearing white, who almost interlock their hands, with the walls of the cemetery in the background, which cover up the cypresses in the distance..
Altarpiece of love
In 1911, the public in Barcelona admired his Altarpiece of Love (1910), a polyptych of six panels with unequal measurements presided over by two female nudes. Down, virtuous women. Up, sinful women. In the background, the mythical city of Torres, the essential Córdoba. That same year he illustrated Voces de gesta , a work by his friend Valle-Inclán, as well as several compositions by the Machado brothers. He presents The consecration of the couplet and the portraits of Belmonte and Pastora Imperio, as well as his Self-portrait . He travels to Munich and then goes to Buenos Aires. In 1913 he visits Chicago and later Ghent. He paints La Gracia and El Pecado , also his famous Poema de Córdoba , a polyptych in seven tables atypical in the Spanish tradition.
Portrait Artist
Romero de Torres is also a great lover of portraiture. With close to a thousand works, more than 500 belong to identified portraits. The vast majority, just over 400, belong to actresses, dancers, singers, writers or the wives of businessmen and politicians. As a portrait painter, between 1915 and 1930, Romero captured all social classes on his canvases, although given his notoriety, his work was mostly in demand by renowned models who paid a considerable sum for their work, from members of the aristocracy or the bourgeoisie. Madrid, Basque or Catalan, even the artists, cupletistas or outstanding bullfighters. Romero de Torres was the chronicler of an entire era. Only the athletes were missing, to whom Romero paid no attention.
Adela Carboné, the Tanagra
Adela Carboné, called la Tanagra (1890), is a very interesting character that Romero de Torres painted in 1911, when the actress was twenty-one years old. Carboné was the sister-in-law of the Córdoba writer Cristóbal de Castro, who that same year would marry the actress Mary Carboné de Arcos, of Genoese origin. His sister Adela, in addition to being an actress, would write some short novels, such as Lotino's crime (1917), La huella (1918), La hermanastra (1919) or The Hanged Friend (1920). As an actress, she was the protagonist of some primitive Spanish cinema films, such as Aventuras de Pepín (1909) or The Ghost of the Castle (1911).
The consecration of the copla
Julio Romero had portrayed Pastora Imperio on several occasions before 1912, but her face can be seen among the portraits that are part of the monumental canvas La consecration de la copla, including that of Julio Romero himself. Artists such as Adela Carbone or Socorro Miranda and the bullfighters Machaquito or Guerra are also appreciated. After the jury of the 1912 National Exhibition of Fine Arts refused to grant any distinction to the work of Romero de Torres, Gregorio Martínez Sierra together with Jacinto Benavente, Benito Pérez Galdós and a hundred more signatures of the most recognized intellectuals in Spain, raised his voice publicly to support the painter from Córdoba and protest against the decision of the jury of the National Exhibition.
The Venus of poetry
The Venus of Poetry is a painting made in oil and tempera in 1913 by Julio Romero de Torres. Its dimensions are 93.2 × 154 cm. This painting is an allegory that shows the portraits of the Spanish cuple player Raquel Meller and her husband, the Guatemalan writer, Enrique Gómez Carrillo.It was acquired by the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum.
Poem of Cordoba
The polyptych Poema de Córdoba, painted in 1913, is composed of seven panels, it is an allegory of the city of Córdoba through its most characteristic female characters. It was exhibited in Madrid at the National Exhibition of Fine Arts in 1915. The size of six elements is identical, but the seventh and central one is larger. In each panel the history of the city is allegorically represented through some of its most illustrious characters. From left to right: Warrior Córdoba, Baroque Córdoba, Jewish Córdoba, Christian Córdoba, Roman Córdoba, Religious Córdoba and Bullfighter Córdoba. In the central panel, two women hold an image of San Rafael, the most faithful archangel of Córdoba.
Sin and Grace
Painted in 1915, Grace -written with a capital letter at the time- was the opposite of Sin (1913). Both canvases have exact dimensions and seem made to hang in the same space. Grace was not unveiled until the National Exhibition of 1915. The canvas, after the exhibition, was purchased by the American industrialist Charles Deering. After some vicissitudes and coming from a private collection in the United States, it went up for auction at the Sotheby's gallery in London in 2000 and was acquired by the Córdoba City Council for the price of €612,000.
Julio Romero repeats the same compositional structure in both: the nude of a young woman surrounded by four female characters. The model, who appeared in her fullness in "El sin", is shown in "La gracia" repentant, with her body collapsed, dying, although still beautiful, in the hands of some saints, who give her the virtue that she does not have. The scene resembles that of Christ who has just descended from the cross. The figure on the left, in a nun's habit, is none other than the singer Carmen Casena. Mary Magdalene could be that little nun who hugs the feet of the young woman. The model, of proverbial beauty, is Adela Moyano. It has been said that the work recalls the descent of El Greco in his work "La quinta Angustia".
The landscape once again gives an immense serenity to the space. While in La gracia the silhouette of the Almodóvar del Río Castle can be seen, in the second we can glimpse isolated monuments of Córdoba, the eternal city of Romero: the cemetery of San Rafael, the church of the Fuensanta, the Guadalquivir and its mills, the Roman bridge, Calahorra, the church of Santa Marina, the tower of the church of San Lorenzo and the Mosque.
La Argentinita
A child prodigy, La Argentinita was introduced to the public at the age of eight at the Teatro-Circo de San Sebastián. From that moment on she was known by La Argentinita to distinguish her from the also famous Antonia Mercé who received the name La Argentina . After touring Spain as a child prodigy, she ended up in Madrid, working in various theaters. She combined flamenco, tango, bulerías and boleros, in a sort of mix that was a novelty in her time. Julio Romero de Torres painted it upon his arrival in Madrid in 1915. Over time, La Argentinita would connect with the incipient Generation of '27, and accompany Rafael Alberti, Federico García Lorca, Edgar Neville and Ignacio Sánchez Mejías, the rich and famous bullfighter who was her lover. [citation needed] Romero's oil is just 38 by 32 cm. She highlights the green background of the painting, in contrast to the red of her headdress, over her hair. Green and red overlap the delicate figure of the model, a girlish Argentinita who wears a simple beige blouse. The simplicity and subtlety of the lines of the portrait lead Julio Romero de Torres to approach new artistic movements in vogue.
Maturity stage (1916-1930)
In 1915, Romero de Torres settled in Madrid. He will live at Carrera de San Jerónimo, number 15, next to the Congress of Deputies. His studio is set up on Calle Pelayo, in a flat provided by Florestán Aguilar, King Alfonso XIII's personal dentist.
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That year he exhibited, in a special section out of competition, fifteen works at the National Exhibition of Fine Arts. It would be the last year that he participated in a National Exhibition.
He frequents the Café Pombo and signs the allied manifesto together with Gregorio Marañón, Menéndez Pidal, Ortega, Machado, Valle, Galdós, Casas, Zuloaga, Unamuno and Azaña. His work Carmen is acquired by the right-handed Juan Belmonte. Romero illustrates The vested interests of Benavente.
Julio Romero was associated with the magazine España, directed first by Ortega and later by Araquistáin and Azaña. He also attends the gatherings at the Maison Dorée, where the great figures of Spanish modernism meet. The Oriol family entrusted him with the decoration of the chapel on their farm in El Plantío, near Madrid, where he will paint a mural on the theme of the Eucharist.
In 1919 he painted and portrayed the most important industrialists in Bilbao: the Aznar, Soto, and Garnica families. In Córdoba, the Basabé family also poses in his studio.
Mannerism
As a professor of “Ancient Drawings and Clothing” at the so-called Special School of Painting installed at the Royal Academy of San Fernando in Madrid since 1916, Romero de Torres is increasingly interested in the clothing and clothing of his models. He meticulously studies all the details and gives rise to talk, since 1920, of a new stage, the Mannerist. The painting is filled with symbolic objects, such as the brass pieces, which replace the previous images of Córdoba, the sacred and mythical city.
In 1920, Julio Romero de Torres painted one of his masterpieces, The Death of Santa Inés, a three-panel polyptych of pure mannerism and difficult to produce. Romero returns again and again to the study of the Italian Renaissance and Spanish classical art and produces a masterpiece. for this he reinterprets the myth of Saint Agnes.
Musician
The French actress Jeanne Roques (“Musidora”) arrived in Spain in 1921 with a three-month contract to perform at the Teatro de la Comedia in Madrid. Through the intermediation of the cupletista Raquel Meller, wife of the Guatemalan writer Enrique Gómez Carrillo, the actress meets the Cordovan painter, who captures her in more than one painting that same year. It is in the circle of Romero de Torres that she meets the rejoneador Antonio Cañero, a rich Cordovan landowner.
The actress spent five years on Spanish soil, returning to Paris in 1926. Three of her films deal with her time in Spain: Une aventure de Musidora en Espagne, Soleil et ombre and The land of the bulls.
Witcomb Gallery in Buenos Aires
On September 4, 1922, Romero de Torres inaugurated an exhibition at the Witcomb Gallery in Buenos Aires. There he exhibited for the first time the work Black Pearl , which at that time was known as The brunette with pearls . The success of the piece and of the group of works that Romero de Torres presented in Argentina, among which his oil painting Musidora was also included, was such that the painter sold the entire exhibited genre. The resounding triumph of the exhibition in Buenos Aires certified another step in his career and announced that the international fame of the Cordovan painter was already a fact.
In 1924 he painted the portrait of the artist Conchita Triana. Romero has put aside his most classical stage and delves into the search for a spiritual portrait. In 1928 he painted La Virgen de los Faroles for the façade of the Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba. In 1929, at the Ibero-American Exhibition in Seville, he presented La chiquita piconera , Nocturno , La copla or Naranjas y limones . Also from 1929 is Cante hondo , a clear example of his last mannerism. If The death of Santa Inés opens a perfectionist stage, in which the painter seeks to reflect the folds of clothing, the overlapping of elements, completing the visual space, a a kind of horror vacui with well-known elements: his dog Pacheco or the Virgen de los Dolores.
Sing deeply
Around 1928 the doctors warned him of the poor state of his health. Fatigue makes her slow down his work rate. In a long interview, the journalist Manuel Chaves Nogales accompanies him through the city of Córdoba and talks about an exceptional artist.César González-Ruano also interviews him around 1930. Julio Romero confessed to the journalist that he needed to rest.
Julio Romero was a great "cansao." A few months ago he told me in his studio on the street of Pelayo, next to the huge braseros, near the vitrina where he kept stunts and capotes of Lagartijo, sitting the two with a brunette chaval, who wrapped his body in a coat of the painter.
- - I'm tired. I get tired of Madrid and I get tired of Cordoba.
- - Where are you going, then?
- - Paris. I get tired of this, too..."
César González-Ruano.
Cante Hondo, which he left signed in 1929, is a tribute to the cante jondo of his land and none of the essential elements are missing from his life. It seems like a farewell to the painter in which he does not want to leave anyone out. Nor his dog, Pacheco who crowns the altar of the flamenco muse like a triumph, naked and with a guitar, with a corpse of a very beautiful girl behind him, and a corpse at his feet of a unfortunate woman. His lover and murderer wields a tell-tale knife.
In May 1930, when death came, he interrupted two important paintings: the portrait of the Countess of Colomera, Magdalena Muñoz-Cobo, who poses in a silver chiffon dress, and the portrait of María Teresa López, his favorite model in recent years, an Argentine by birth whom he immortalized in his work Fuensanta and whom he leaves unfinished in the canvas of La monja.
The little naughty girl
Deep eroticism exudes the last work signed by Romero de Torres, La chiquita piconera (1930). Included in her mannerist stage, the model catches us with a complicit look. Romero's fetishism is perceptible in the heeled shoes, the silk stockings, the orange garters, the bare shoulder and the opening of the breasts. The ensemble, with its classic packaging, is closed with a popular brazier, circular in shape and ubiquitous in Andalusian culture. The young piconera is the prototype of Julio Romero's muse.
Death
The artist died in his birthplace in Córdoba in the early hours of Saturday, May 10, 1930. People flocked to the Museum of Fine Arts in Plaza del Potro, to bear witness to their pain before the corpse, deposited in the hall of the Provincial Museum, former chapel of the Hospital de la Caridad. The City Council agreed to cover the expenses of the funerals, attend the burial in plenary session and cede land in perpetuity in the San Rafael cemetery to collect the mortal remains of the painter. The Provincial Council also attended in plenary session, carrying the coffin ribbons. The Minister of Grace and Justice, José Estrada y Estrada, attended the funeral on behalf of King Alfonso XIII. The burial took place on Monday, May 12, at 10 in the morning, in the Mosque-Cathedral. Father Tortosa gave the funeral oration and a very long procession, which also included his famous models, led him to the cemetery, on the outskirts of the city. Prior to the act, his corpse was taken to Capuchin Square, where the & # 34; Reverie & # 34; of Schumann. The shops, theaters, cafes, casinos, bars and taverns of the city were closed. No one wanted to miss the last goodbye to the teacher. The taxis were dressed in black crepes; UGT affiliates, gathered by the organization, came in their work suits, considering that an accredited worker had died. He is buried in the San Rafael Cemetery in his hometown.
Most important works
The bulk of his work can be found in Córdoba at the Julio Romero de Torres Museum, where you can admire the wide repertoire of paintings that were donated by his family, by private collectors or purchased by the City Council. Among the most outstanding works of this master are Oranges and Lemons, Mystic Love and Profane Love, Poema de Córdoba, Marta y María , La saeta, Cante hondo, La consecración de la copla, Carmen, and of course, La chiquita piconera or The altarpiece of love.
Other works such as La Buenaventura, La feria de Córdoba or La monja can be seen at the Carmen Thyssen Museum in Malaga.
As Francisco Zueras Torrens writes in his essay, the main characteristics of his work are full of content and profuse study of each element present in the painting. Thus, these can be summarized as:
- Symbolism - Precision of form and drawing - Soft light in clothes and flesh - Strange light of scenes - Poetic artificiality of scenes - Mastery of morbidity - Huge capacity to represent the human figure - Landscapes that reinforce symbolism - Landscapes where reality becomes allegory - Landscapes ready to be tasted by the soul "without dwelling on the leathery surface of things - Dematerialized landscapes for their ultimate experience with the viewer.
Auctions
On October 15, 2020, his painting Las dos sendas (1915), owned by the PRASA business group, was auctioned. The auction took place at Christie's in New York and the work was awarded for €405,000.