Ramón Gómez de la Serna called her witch, Meiga and Pythonese. Dalí complimated her in her way telling her that she was “half angel, half seafood” and Buñuel never forgave her that she defeated him in a blasphemous contest. Maruja Mallo’s overwhelming personality (Viveiro, Lugo, 1902 – Madrid, 1995) crossed the great social and creative transformations of the twentieth century, leaving a mark on everything he undertook. Transgressive, fascinating and owner of a fearsome sense of humor, embodied as no one the new free and emancipated woman of the Republic.
The war and the dictatorship expelled it from Spain for 25 years and the return, in 1962, it was difficult to overcome its strength and the recognition of some unconditional. It was necessary to wait until 2010 so that the Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando dedicated an anthological that recognized it as one of the most important figures of the generation of 27 and an essential artist of the avant -garde of the twentieth century. It was the first time that the sacrosanct institution presumed about a woman’s work and also celebrated that Mallo was one of her first students. That was the beginning of a consecration that today reaches its maximum expression with the exhibition Maruja Mallo: mask and compass. Paints and drawings from 1924 to 1982an exhaustive retrospective of more than a hundred works that travel and document their entire career: from the magical realism of their early years to the geometric and fantastic configurations of their latest works. The exhibition that this Saturday opens at the Botín de Santander Center can be visited until September 14. Co -produced with Reina Sofía, it will be exhibited in Madrid from October 8.
Historian Patricia Molins, head of the Reina Sofía Museum Exhibition Department, has been in charge of elaborating a sample that wants to go beyond the mere exhibition of the artist’s work. To the numerous loans of paintings and drawings of national and international institutions, documentation (interviews, letters, photographs) of the Lafuente Archive, belonging to Reina Sofía and located in Santander, just in front of the Botín Center has been added. Molins wanted to draw a complete portrait of a contemporary creator of artists such as Frida Kahlo or Georgia O’Keeffe.
The entire second floor of the building built by Renzo Piano is occupied by Maruja Mallo. Molins has opted for chronological order. From magical realism and the compositions of surrealist nature of its early years to the geometric and fantastic configurations of their latest works. The documentary material illustrates the visitor how from his earliest youth, Maruja Mallo was related to intellectuals such as Salvador Dalí, André Breton, José Ortega y Gasset, Federico García Lorca, Pablo Picasso, Luis Buñuel, Ramón Gómez de la Serna, Miguel Hernández, Rafael Alberti, Rosa Chacel or María Zambrano among many others.
The exhibition starts with two paintings of its beginnings: Indigenous (1024-1925) y Lady portrait with fan (around 1926), from the Provincial Museum of Lugo. There are two works that present two key issues in their career: interest in other cultures and the portrait of modern women.
When the curator is asked to make an assessment of the artist, he responds without hesitation that Mallo is one of the main figures of the generation of 27 and the Spanish art of the twentieth century. “This was evident in 1936 for the number of exhibitions he made, his constant presence in the national press, the initial takeoff of his projection abroad,” Scarecrowa work of his individual exhibition in Paris in 1932, and the French state another of the exhibition of contemporary Spanish art in the Jeu de Pomme in 1936 ″. The expert adds that in the postwar other artists such as Luis Castellanos, her partner of the Vallecas School, placed her as the most influential artist in Republican Madrid. Even criticism reflects their importance: his former friend Ernesto Giménez Caballero names Mallo and Lorca as “the influences with which we must end in culture so that the war they had earned in the military field did not miss later in the cultural.”
The exhibition continues with its most popular series: Verbenas y Prints. The curator explains that Mallo defined her verbenas as “magical creations of exact measures.” They are carnival scenes in which the people, without distinction of races, classes or genres, is the protagonist, while the topics usually linked to black Spain – toros, civil guards, manolas, castes, or superstition – are ridiculed, and “the people take mythology and saints as a pretext to have fun collectively,” the artist himself explained. But verbena is also the occasion of truce in which races and landscapes around the world live together – including black angels – and science and magic shake hands, reflecting the simultaneity and dynamism of the modern city. Here their five verbenas will meet for the first time. At the four that are already exhibited, a fifth will be added that is currently part of another exhibition.
The prints, which she later called “symbolism”, Include several series: popular prints, sports, kinematics and shop windows and mannequins.
The recognition that Mallo achieved from Breton made it a long time linked to the surrealist movement when that approach was very sporadic. Sewers and bells (1929-32) is the series in which the dream atmosphere is more present. Here the human figure only appears as a footprint, residue or skeleton, abandoned in the Baldía Earth. They are paintings that paint in the times during which it frequents the artists of the School of Vallecas and travels through Castilla with Miguel Hernández, his partner at the time.
Photographs
Between drawings and models of theatrical stages, the exhibition addresses one of the most fascinating parts of the artist’s work: photographs. The image that has transcended the most is the one that looks in television interviews with Soler Serrano or Paloma Chamorro. Dressed and made up with mint green, Canarian yellow, blue and all the ranges of the violet, fascinated the camera with its precise and sly narrative. It was a sense of humor and an experimental desire that led her to self -return more than any other artist. The commissioner points out an image of 1929, a moment of crisis of the artist, in which he appears between a car and an abandoned train. In 1945 he returned to that performative theatization portraying on a Chilean beach as a sea goddess covered with algae.
Of his Argentine exile are exhibited as Athletes and acrobats (fifty years), Vacuum inhabitants (around 1968-1980) and Ether travelers (1982).
The closure is a tribute to the Western Magazine. It had been Ortega y Gasset who in 1928 offered him the halls of the publication to organize an exposure to which the flower and cream of the Madrid artistic world attended. It was such a success that Maruja Mallo became an essential voice for every cultural and social event that is precious. Upon exile was Soledad Ortega, director of the Western Magazine, who facilitated his first public collaborations, as a cover of covers. Many of those images became the paintings of their last stage. The artist was again the main collaborator of the magazine, and especially the numbers dedicated to José Ortega y Gasset and the Republic.
Why has it taken so long to make a complete exhibition dedicated to an essential artist for the avant -garde? Manuel Segade, director of Reina Sofía, acknowledged during the presentation in Santander that he is incomprehensible. In fact, one of the first goals he had when he arrived at the museum was to give Mallo an anthological at his height. “But we knew that the Botín Center already worked on the project and decided to co -produce the exhibition with them. It is a collaboration between the public and the private that has helped us complete the artist’s portrait.”
Segade took the opportunity to remember that the rehabilitation works of the old Bank of Spain in Santander, in front of the Botín Center, will be ready in just over a year. In addition to becoming the headquarters of the Lafuente Archive, it will be a space in which contemporary art exhibitions will be held and will always depend on Queen Sofia.
Maruja Mallo continued to investigate and create almost until the end. Space races, UFOs and esoteric universes starred in their last works.
Mallo died in Madrid on February 6, 1995 at age 93. The fracture of a hip forced her to live in a geriatric center for a decade. There, with his closest friends, he remained the queen of the gatherings he enjoyed so much.