UNTIL SUNDAY 5/2
BB.AA MUSEUM. Saint Pius V, 9
The usual thing, that holding the meager budget of the Museum of Fine Arts of Valencia with two fingers (state-owned) The art gallery is forced to mount its exhibitions looking at its own collection with the director Pablo González Tornel performing curatorial duties.. It is the third exhibition that the police station has had in the two or so years that it has been captaining the ship and this is one of the great ones, occupies the two rooms dedicated to temporary exhibitions of the museum. It is dedicated to the genre of portrait understood as an act of the will of those portrayed to endure beyond death., to be remembered when they are no longer. The desire for posterity.
Anima. Paint the face and the soul start strong hanging, together with Captain General Ramón María de Narváez and Alfonso XIII, the portrait signed by José Segrelles of the dictator Francisco Franco dressed as a military man. Aware that it will cause blisters, Tornel justified himself in the presentation by stating that this is, unequivocally, a work of art, and that serves to reflect on the importance that the viewer has in the life of a work, since it perceives it and gives it content in the now in a totally different way than when it was painted. Controversies aside, This introduction comes to tell us that the face is the reflection of the soul, what is it, eventually, the artists wanted to capture in creations such as the tormented Saint John the Evangelist by Francisco Ribalta. In the section dedicated to dynastic portraits we have the Vich family clad in armor in a series of paintings by Antonio Stella that have been restored for the occasion (They were destroyed from the waist down in the flood of the 57) o, painted by the school of Diego Velázquez, the equestrian oil painting of Charles II, that king with whom the Habsburg dynasty in Spain ended when he died without issue. The next part of the tour is dedicated to alliances that have nothing to do with blood, but with the intellect, generated in monastic orders or artistic and literary circles. Here we have self-portraits of Benlliure, Pinazo and Manuela Ballester (in an act of reaffirmation), and the portraits of the playwright Gaspar Aguilar painted by Juan Ribalta or the poet and historian of the Golden Age Leonardo de Argensola.
The gender perspective is discussed below, showing women who managed to be portrayed jumping over their only virtue in those times, its procreative character. Here is Saint Teresa of Jesus—whom Tornel described as the most important woman of the Modern Age in the world—, who managed to be portrayed the way she wanted, like a writer by the grace of God, not like a contemplative nun. Or the zarzuela star Isabel Bru portrayed by Joaquín Sorolla at the beginning of the 20th century, when certain free professionals stopped depending on men and were able to control the projection of their image. Bru did not marry, worked as a singer, He supported his family and controlled his image by commissioning a portrait from the “most famous painter in the world.” (Tornel I said) at that time. Afterwards you will meet the Don and Donas Nobody who today we do not know who they are despite the fact that they wanted to be portrayed with the desire to pass on to posterity, by artists as powerful as Raimundo de Madrazo. And this great exhibition closes with portraits who are remembered for having done memorable things in life., characters like Jesus Christ, David (Goliath's), Carlomagno… In times of selfies and compulsive portraits, The Museum of Fine Arts comes to tell us that this fear of not existing if you are not seen comes from many, many, centuries ago. S.M.
