Art and Social Change in Spain (1885-1910)

Thematic route map

1. Work
2. Education
3. Religion
4. Illness and medicine
5. Death
6. Work-related accidents
7. Prostitution
8. Emigration
9. Poverty and ethnic and social marginalization
10. Strikes and social demands

Introduction

Decisive transformations aimed at modernizing Spain, similar to what had happened in Europe, took place between the liberal governments of 1885 and 1910. Artists no longer focused on historical issues, but began to address present life, thus converting their works into eloquent testimonies of said changes.

Influenced by photography, Spanish painters sought objectivity in representation, leading them to adopt a naturalistic style akin to that which had prevailed in France and other countries. Nevertheless, some of their works took on a special identity thanks to the study and vindication of Velázquez as a reputable reference. Many of these artists showed their works at the National Exhibitions of Fine Arts, where a considerable number of them were acquired by the State. For this very reason, the Museo Nacional del Prado conserves the most significant collection of social painting in Spain. Twenty of these paintings, most of them large in size, represent the core of the exhibition. This exhibition is the institution’s first on the topic, one that is highly relevant given its presence in the museum’s collections but barely represented in its permanent exhibition, thus making it insufficiently known. Sculpture and graphic arts are also included along with painting, in addition to photography and cinema, which had the most prominent role in shaping the image of the times.

The topics chosen to embody the sections of the exhibition cover different aspects of contemporary life, including aspects that have been hardly considered before due to their lack of beauty, supposed lack of decorum, apparent triviality or alleged lack of interest. This includes industrial work and women’s work, education, illness and medicine, work-related accidents, prostitution, emigration, poverty and ethnic and social marginalization, colonialism, strikes, anarchism and workers’ demands. On the contrary, other themes that had a long tradition, such as work in the field and at sea, religion and death, were portrayed under a different light, which is why they also included the selection.

The exhibition analyzes the varying interpretations of all these themes, the link between different techniques, such as photography, drawing and painting, and the crisis faced by the naturalistic representation system after the successes of its most notable creators, such as brothers Luis and José Jiménez Aranda, Vicente Cutanda, Joaquín Sorolla, Santiago Rusiñol and Ramon Casas.

The period of emergence of the first social art took place between the Paris World’s Fairs of 1889 and of 1900, events during which two Spanish painters, Luis Jiménez Aranda and Joaquín Sorolla, respectively, received the medal of honor. Although the proposals of naturalism continued to be shaped by other artists until 1910, they were replaced by works of a more expressive nature. As Velázquez’s influence declined among innovative artists who were also sensitive to the transformations that had changed Europe, these artists progressively looked to El Greco and his approach.

The first important, and also the earliest, example was Darío de Regoyos and, after 1900, Francisco Iturrino, Ricardo Baroja, Hermen Anglada-Camarasa, Isidre Nonell, Evaristo Valle, Joaquim Sunyer, Pablo Gargallo, Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris and José Gutierrez Solana. Ignacio Zuloaga and Julio Romero de Torres also worked by following very personal approaches that placed a greater focus on certain aspects of art of the past and new directions. Cinema had elevated the possibilities of representing life to the greatest level, such that artists renounced large formats and objectivity and followed a radically modern direction, which took into consideration the revolution spurred by post-impressionism in Paris. There, painters, sculptors and graphic artists, including many Catalan and Basque creators, found a suitable avenue for developing their proposals with greater freedom and away from academia. The fact that they continued to address the same topics as naturalists allows us to highlight throughout the exhibition the richness of approaches to those issues in a short period of time, which is therefore of great interest and relevance.

The catalog, edited by Javier Barón, who is responsible for the initial study on painting, includes other studies on sculpture, by Leticia Azcue, photography, by Beatriz Sánchez Torija, and the Catalan context, by Francesc Fontbona. The nearly three hundred works forming part of the exhibition have undergone detailed and individual analyses that have been carried out by these authors and by almost thirty specialists.