Gustavo de Maeztu Museum presents its next temporary exhibition
‘Solana. Engraver. Fundación MAPFRE Collections’.
In collaboration with Fundación MAPFRE, the Gustavo de Maeztu Museum presents the exhibition ‘Solana. Engraver. Fundación MAPFRE Collections’.
From 5 December 2024 to 2 February 2025, the Museo Gustavo de Maeztu, in collaboration with Fundación MAPFRE, is presenting an exhibition dedicated to the work of José Gutiérrez Solana, one of the most singular figures of 20th century Spanish art, in the temporary exhibition hall.
José Gutiérrez Solana (Madrid, 1886-1945) is undoubtedly one of the most singular figures of 20th century Spanish art. Both his biography and his work reveal a peculiar personality, irreducible to any pigeonholing within the framework of the traditional art scene, because his career was equally alien to the avant-garde – which he did not ignore – and to the academic tradition. The creator of a profoundly personal vision, in his paintings, etchings and lithographs, as well as in his texts, Solana seems to approach, above all, the Spanish literature of his time.
In the same sense as Pío Baroja, but in contrast to the writer, Solana does not make any pronouncements about it.
There is not the slightest sense of criticism or regeneration in Solana’s work. On the contrary, he shows us, through his favourite themes, a dark reality in which he seems to move with the utmost naturalness: processions, masks, shop windows, ragmen, strange still lifes, dark interiors or women from life.
All these themes recur insistently throughout his career, contributing to the creation of a legend, which he himself cultivated, full of stories and anecdotes that speak of a peculiar character who had one of his greatest defenders in Ramón Gómez de la Serna, a companion of his generation and of his gatherings.
Solana is not the traditional dark and ‘black’ Spain, even though he participates in the tradition opened up by Goya in our country, but neither is he the path to new art. It is rather the crossroads, the alley where different visions of the same reality overlap and overlap. Everything about him is paradoxical, everything speaks of his lucid vision of a contradictory and complex reality, like his peculiar way of understanding and embodying the Spanish.
Fundación MAPFRE’s collection of Solana’s engravings consists of 26 of the 28 etchings catalogued by Rafael Díaz Casariego and 4 lithographs of the 7 that remain.
Some of the etchings include aquatint and drypoint and form part of the print run made by Adolfo Rupérez and Juan Hidalgo from the original plates left by the artist on his death.The painter took up the technique of engraving around 1918, when he attended the National School of Graphic Arts in Madrid, although most of his engravings and lithographs were printed in Castro-Gil’s workshop in the early 1930s. Later, during the Civil War, he produced three more lithographs in Valencia.
Almost all Solana’s prints refer to a painted model (and sometimes also to a written one), on which they depend directly, and both oil paintings and engravings present the artist’s typical repertoire, including popular types, beggars, rag-pickers, women of life and masks.
This is the case of Women of Life (c.1932-133), Trapera (c.1932-33) or Sleeping House (c.1932-33), to cite a few examples, as well as the numerous prints with the theme of masks, which is none other than that of the carnival that so fascinated the artist.
Etymologically, carnival comes from ‘carnelevare’, that is to say, to remove flesh, to suppress it, and is linked, above all, to the use of a disguise that hides the face. This mask originally had a funerary origin which, when treated through a disguise, is linked to the funereal and the grotesque, or the ridiculous. Solana uses this instrument to deal with these aspects of existence, but in the manner of Goya he does not convey any moral judgement, but simply presents this world for us, the spectators, to contemplate.
Admission to this exhibition is free and it can be visited from Tuesday to Saturday, from 9:30 am to 1:30 pm; Sundays and public holidays, from 11:00 am to 2:00 pm.
