Voces del Prado

Unusual Cases Regarding the Prado Disperso VI: Una huelga de obreros en Vizcaya by Cutanda

Mercedes Orihuela Maeso, Conservator of the Service of Deposits, 1975-What's on

We had been searching for some time to locate a work that had been deposited at the Ministry of Labour, before it was located in Nuevos Ministerios, during the time of the Republic when the Ministries of Home Affairs and Labour were housed in the Building of Amador de los Ríos, which today only houses the Ministry for Home Affairs. We had been searching for a while for an immense painting called Una huelga de obreros en Vizcaya (Workers’ Strike in Biscay) [by Vicente Cutanda]. Obviously, the Ministry of Labour during the Franco era had no interest in exhibiting a painting about a strike in Biscay. Between 2002 and 2004 the Chief Clerk at the Ministry of Labour told us, “we wanted to hang it on the stairs and, when trying to unroll it, we saw the name V. Cutanda”. And I said, “don’t do anything else; don’t touch it… we’ll be right over”. We unrolled it with the help of the restorers. Eva Perales and Lucía Martínez Valverde were there. And it turned out to be the enormous painting we’d been looking for, which has been restored and is now back at the Prado, because the deposit has now been lifted and the work has been brought back.