Mariano Fortuny and Madrazo
Introduction
Painting is one of the most controversial artistic facets of this author. Fortuny’s pictorial work is complex and varied. It goes in the general lines of static symbolism of the end of the nineteenth century, although it also moves by other currents such as the new academicism or orientalism.
For this reason and because of its multiple knowledge of many other artistic disciplines, it is very difficult to typecast this author within a particular movement or artistic current. While it is true that he did not explicitly display his knowledge in other disciplines, his knowledge in luminotechnics and chemistry, they undoubtedly contributed something different from his painting, the trade to which he dedicated himself all his life with delivery, but ended up occupying a secondary planeWhen talking about his work.
Developing
Fortuny understood the painting as the act of generating relief on a flat surface using the different tools and materials, but never disregarding the drawing, which considered a fundamental basis for generating a sensation of relief. Under his point of view, fleeing the difficulty of learning drawing and dispensing with him is to get out of the maximum of painting and "do something else".
Mariano Fortuny and Madrazo began his education very early when he moves with his family to Paris. He is an educated horse painter between two centuries. Was formed in the academic tradition of the S.XIX, a few years after arriving in Paris he enters as an apprentice in the workshop of Jean Joseph Benjamin Constant, a very quoted portraitist of the time. It is himself who instills Fortuny respect for academic painting and precision in details. It is curious since the academic aesthetics was already questioning in the times when Mariano Fortuny and Madrazo was being educated.
At that time in Paris, there were two currents that were apparently irreconcilable: academic painting, official and innovative painters (at that time it was represented above all by impressionism), which opted to rehabilitate the official art of the S.XIX. However, and although there was a latent "fight" between the two artistic currents, it cannot be denied that both currents took inspiration from the other side.
While it is true that at the end of the century the innovative current was made with a blunt victory, during the 70s and 80s the official painters were those who had the support and recognition of the government, and therefore with the sympathy of the public. In this environment of so much pictorial eclecticism, the most innovative themes with an always correct technique coexist according to the established norms. These themes were costumbristas, the portrait with the landscape, decorative painting of nudes and orientalism with lifes
Mariano Fortuny was an excellent cartoonist, he practiced the copying technique a lot. This technique led him to have a great technique in drawing and color, which he would then apply with great skill in his natural model nudes paintings.
In the mid -80s, Mariano begins to experience an evolution in his artistic tastes although without moving away from academic. It is at this time when he knows the work of Richard Wagner (composer), and from there he arrives at the symbolist movement, a movement that is not only aesthetic, but also idealistic.
Symbolism sought a return to beauty, humanism, ideal and dreams as part of the reality of man. Mariano is very attracted to this new conception of art, and embarks thus on a new artistic stage after finishing his education. His symbolist stage, which he carries out between Paris and Venice, is considered the zenith of his career as a painter.
Symbolism is however, a very mystical and elitist current. It seeks the creation of a hermetic language, which makes an art inaccessible to those subjects who do not share the same aspirations and concerns.
conclusion.
Mariano Fortuny and Madrazo, although he agreed with this elitist model, rejects the hermetic language in his painting. He is convinced that there is a reality behind things, so one of the most important means of expression of this current, the naturalistic permutation is accepted. This medium decontextualizes the natural object, but without modifying its external appearance, thus the fantasy of the appearance arises by giving the image unreal and impossible feelings in the real world. At mediocrity, it was mysterious, the search for ideals and the nostalgia of the past times.
Fortuny and Madrazo’s family came from a very long academic artistic tradition for which he was negatively compared with them during their beginnings in the trade, therefore it was expected that as soon as he got into the symbolism, the more he moved away from theguardianship of your relatives. These did not approve Mariano’s work until he was awarded the Gold Medal at the Munich International Exhibition of 1986 for his work Las Girls Flores.
When moving to Venice, he enters the Venetian artistic circles and there he contacts the decadent spirit of the end of the century.
Obviously, all these intellectual experiences are reflected in their work, but Fortuny, attracted by the beauty of the conventionally "well done", is oriented towards an academic symbolism, completely moving away from the avant -garde proposals that arise in this movement.
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