ZURBARÁN, JUAN GRIS, ESTEBAN VICENTE. A spanish tradition of modernity

This exhibition, the first of three programmed for the centennial of the birth of Esteban Vicente, attempts to be an homage that reflects the painter’s thoughts and feelings about art. Vicente stated on numerous occasions that he felt himself to be the heir to a series of masters of Spanish painting within a certain tradition. This same tradition-characterized by its pure and refined interest in reality as a point of departure towards the transcendent-also links up with the literature of the mystics and Cervantes. In painting, it is marked by the presence of light, chromatic harmony and a type of severe, angular composition. Esteban Vicente believed that Zurbarán and Gris were the two most outstanding members of this tradition. He also wrote some perceptive texts about their works which are, in turn, revealing about his own painting.

In regard to Zurbarán (1598-1664), Esteban Vicente wrote: “I see in his work qualities that, for me, depict the mystic: stillness, repose, inner silence, passion, energy,” words that could also apply to his own mature pictorial language. Referring to Juan Gris (1887-1927) he said, “In essence, Juan Gris’s work reminded me of Zurbarán… His austerity and sobriety are very similar to Zurbarán’s; the same is true of his ascetism, silence, white light, intimacy, enclosure.” Antonio Bonet Correa, the curator of this exhibition, reminds us that, in a period marked by tenebrism in painting, Zurbarán “worked with soft, clear colors, of a luminous brightness and glowing clarity.” It is a silent, sacred world, opposed to the blacknesss and material density characteristic of the so-called “brave strain” in Spanish art. Referring to Juan Gris, he emphasizes the pure forms, rigorous style, clean lines, chromatic gradations, measured rhythms and dynamic coherence of his paintings. Gris’s personality, so humble and profound, created an oeuvre that moved the French critic, Maurice Raynal to write, “we feel a profound, grave, and almost religious emotion,” on seeing his painting. Lastly, Correa Bonet relates Vicente’s work to the earlier painters, commenting that he was fond of attenuating the contrast between dark and light and that he achieved a luminous color field painting of classical harmony. He points out that his work is very different from that of his Action Painting companions or the Spaniard, Antonio Saura, in the same way that Zurbarán’s work differs from his contemporary, Valdés Leal.

This exhibition, comprising a small, but select number of works, sets up a dialogue across the centuries that attempts to show how a common preoccupation with the material aspect of reality may lie in the origin of works that utilize such very different languages as Naturalism, Cubism or Abstraction.

Sponsored by Caja Madrid. Obra Social.