Michael Coy
A GREAT Andalucian artist died 95 years ago this month.
Julio Romero de Torres was a pure cordobes, and his art has come to symbolise the very spirit of his home town. He was born in Cordoba in 1874, and he died there on 10 May 1930.
A bare sketch of his life is simple to relate.
He showed artistic promise as a child. By the age of 12, he was working as an illustrator for a local paper which couldn’t afford photographs.
By his late 20s he had become a Professor of Art, and in his free time he painted portraits and toured Europe.
He entered a painting entitled Nurseries of Love for the Spanish National Exhibition of 1906, but it was disqualified because its theme – prostitution – was ruled ‘immoral’.
Two years later, he won the gold medal with a work called Gypsy Muse.
And here you have the key to the art of Julio Romero de Torres. He was ahead of his time, choosing to deal frankly with erotic themes, and seeing the value of local models, especially gitanas (gypsy women).
He saw it as his life’s work to celebrate the beauty of Cordoba’s beautiful girls.
The house where he lived and worked is now an art gallery, open to the public. It is a former convent, located in Cordoba’s lovely Plaza del Potro.
The museum is closed on Mondays.
Between 16 September and 15 June, it opens at 8:15 in the morning and closes at 8:15 in the evening, Tuesday to Friday. On Saturdays it opens between 9:30 and 5:30, and on Sundays and public holidays, 8:15 to 2:15.
Between 16 June and 15 September, it’s open 8:15 to 2:15, Tuesday to Sunday.
Like the poet Lorca in Granada, who was flourishing at the same time, Romero de Torres understood the value of gypsy culture to Andalucia.
So much so that “he even said that if he had been given the choice between Leonardo da Vinci and the singer Juan Breva, he would undoubtedly have chosen to be Juan Breva. That, said by a painter, is very moving,” says Fuensanta Garcia, former director of the Museum of Fine Arts of Cordoba between 1981 and 2012.
Furthermore, Julio frequently went to a tavern near Fuenseca called Taberna del Bolillo, where he sang and played guitar with Juanillo el Chocolatero, as evidenced by contemporary photos.
He was also interested in personal relationships because “he had many friends and, surprisingly for the time, many female friends, but in the strictest sense of friendship, not the other things that have been said about him.”
And then, he was fascinated by the city of Cordoba, which is why he brings it to his painting in a very unique way.
Cordoban society at the time admired him and “regarded him as an illustrious Cordoban who carried the name of Cordoba wherever he went.”
Senora Garcia recounts a very significant example dated 20 November 1910, when a still young Julio returned to Cordoba from a trip, and two Cordoban musicians who had composed a pasodoble called The Gypsy Muse, like his painting, “went with a band to the train station to greet him and there they premiered the pasodoble.”
And the greatest reflection of this admiration was his multitudinous funeral service – held in the Museum of Fine Arts – and burial, after his death on 10 May 1930.
The response of the people of Cordoba was ‘overwhelming. ‘The number of wreaths received barely made it possible to see the coffin.
In this regard, Garcia recalls that, on the occasion of the painter’s death, the Casa del Pueblo of Cordoba published a manifesto calling on all Cordoba workers to attend the funeral. The text even details that, if they didn’t have time to go home to change their clothes, they should come in their overalls “because they are going to honour an eminent painter and distinguished artist, as they call him.” This demonstrates that he was “admired throughout Cordoba, regardless of social class or ideology.”
If you should find yourself in Cordoba, pay a visit to the home (now museum) of Julio Romero de Torres, an important artist who was also a pure cordobes.
