Category: Sin categoría Page 9 of 10

There are several links that we can establish between the genius of Fuendetodos and the bimillenary city of martyrs. Some of them are clearly contrasted by the reality of his work, while others, pending of corroboration, remain in the air as simple hypothesis or half-hearted speculations.

Etching recorded with number #20 from series of engravings of La Tauromaquia (The Bullfighting) is the image that best demonstrates the link between Goya and Calahorra.

It is titled Ligereza y atrevimiento de Juanito Apiñani en la de Madrid (Lightness and daring of Juanito Apiñani in Madrid’s) and represents one of the most famous stages of the time: the hop pole, whose protagonist is a contemporary calagurritano (from Calahorra) of the Aragonese painter.

Juan Apiñani, born in Calahorra, was a bullfighter on mid-18^th century, banderillero in the team of José Romero and Martincho, and according to the Spanish illustrated erudite José de Vargas Ponce in his work written in 1807, ‘Dissertation on bullfighting’, had a brother, Manuel aka ‘The one-eyed’, who was bullfighter; also called the Tuertillo or the Navarrito, as stated by José María de Cossío in his famous treatise Los Toros (The Bulls), he was the head of the bullfighting team to whose commands, as well as Juan, were their other three brothers, the banderilleros Emeterio, Gaspar and Pascual.

They formed the largest bullfighting family of their time and as team frequented the area of Navarre and Aragon. Pamplona and Zaragoza, which bullring was inaugurated in 1764, were scenes of their deeds, as well as Madrid, where Juan already did bullfighting in the Court since 1750 according to Nicolás Fernández de Moratín.

Its renowned value and valuable skill, his ease and agility in cuts and jumps were the most distinctive features of his worth bullfighter and qualities that gave him fame in his time. Bullfights in Madrid around mid-century; appears in Pamplona in 1752, where does a bullfighting the following years. In 1764 premieres in Plaza de Zaragoza, in which bullfights main runs until 1770 except on year 1767.

 

There is no certainty that the protagonist of the engraving was a matador. However, Néstor Luján in La Tauromaquia: collection of the different stages and attitudes of the art of dealing toros (bulls) invented and recorded by Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, refers to the success and popularity that had as bullfighter Juan Apiñani on foot and as banderillero between 1764 and 1770. He was, even, one of the best-paid matadores at the time. Vargas Ponce quotes an accounting settlement of 1769 which reads: “For jumping the bull, Apiñani, 240 reales (old Spanish coin of 25 cents of peseta)”.

Which is perhaps the most popular image of La Tauromaquia belongs to that group of prints featuring the matadores and most unique bullfighting figures of the era, which includes the most varied stages, duels and distracting manoeuvres of the moment.

Unlike that first group of engravings offering a historical view of the Fiesta and that Goya developed as illustrations from the text of Nicolás Fernández de Moratín, La carta histórica sobre el origen y progresos de las fiestas de toros en España (The historic chart on the origin and progresses of the Festival of Bulls in Spain), the etching of Apiñani is integrated into that second group of prints engraved from the memories of his youth, because we know that it was witnessed by the painter himself in his youth years.

The Aragonese painter’s like for bullfighting is written in letters to his friend Martín Zapater, ending usually signed with the popular nickname of ‘Don Francisco, the one of the bulls’. He even showed off, at the end of his life in French exile of Bordeaux, of having done bullfighting in his youth; that we know from another of his friends, Leandro Fernández de Moratín, who reflected it with these words: “Goya says that has bullfighting in his time and that, with the sword in hand, no one fears. He is doing eighty years old”.

Let’s think of the talent that is passionate about the bulls for the Aragonese genius. Look him attend and witness with his eyes the beauty and the tragedy of what happened in the Spanish arenas; passes and death blows, scenes, various events. And do not forget the famous “I saw it” that underlies the work of the mature Goya and that as a leitmotif beats in every one of his masterpieces. These visionary representations, the evoked scenes, remembered events are seen things; experiences that Goya returns to us, experiences which, in its significance as art, throw some images of penetrating emotion and intense visual force.

In the case of the image that represents the calagurritano bullfighter, Goya implemented lucid visual memory ability to record the scene.

 

If Juan Apiñani was bullfighting around 1750 in Madrid as Moratín says, and was active in the long five years from the last third of the 18^th century which mentions Luján and Vargas Ponce extends up to 1775, it is impossible that during the etching (1814-1816), the bullfighter of Calahorra continue jumping the bull, that said with words that Goya used to name the scene, because we know that the original title was this: Saltar el toro con palo (Jump the bull with stick).

Lafuente Ferrari, in La Tauromaquia, says that on the notes given by Goya, very brief when titling its scenes, Ceán Bermúdez specified the names. In fact it is the Asturian illustrated who identified the protagonist and the place of the death blow Goya represents with this extensive and detailed statement: Ligereza y atrevimiento de Juanito Apiñani, alias el de Calahorra, también en la de Madrid (Llightness and daring of Juanito Apiñani, aka The one from Calahorra, also in Madrid’s).

The critical fortune of which this work possesses has been dilated over time.

In 1917, the Spanish painter and art critic Aureliano de Beruete, in his book Goya grabador (Goya engraver), refers to the print of the jump of the pole as one of the most beautiful etchings of the series and with a supreme originality.

In the middle of last century, the essayist and Spanish erudite José María de Cossío, advised by the Spanish art historian Enrique Lafuente Ferrari, in the second volume of Los Toros considered the Apiñani’s as the most beautiful and bright etching of bullfighting series, and one of the master prints of Goya’s production.

The writer and critic of Spanish Art of the 20^th century Álvaro Martínez-Novillo, in La Tauromaquia, in its historical context, considers the Apiñani’s, of playful character, together with the one which represents the death of the Mayor of Torrejón, of dramatic character, as the two masterpieces of the series. “It’s no more adjectives plastic perfection.”

Other authoritative voices in the topic as the historian of Spanish art, who was Director of the Prado Museum between 1983 and 1991, Alfonso E. Pérez Sánchez, says that the print based on the stage that the calagurritano bullfighter runs is the most beautiful, and the intellectual and art historian Julián Gállego defines it as one of the more gracious and delightful of his graphic work.

Parallel to this print made with the technique of etching and aquatint on a white laid paper, there is a drawing to the sanguine that Goya conceived as preparatory study. On ivory laid paper, there are appreciated slight traces of a second red pencil in addition to the dominant sanguine. The measures are somewhat smaller in the case of the engraving; 245 x 353mm has it of footprint, this drawing decreases to 186 x 278mm. The Prado Museum has dated it at the same time (1814-1816) and given the same title.

The differences between one and another work, slightly visible in the representation of its iconographic elements, are more noticeable in the expression of its formal aspects. The subtle variations in the definition of details and background, changing the disposition of viewers, are insignificant in comparison to the considerable transformation of the approach, significantly further away from the observer, but radically more concise in their reading, and the intensity of the contrasts in the masses of tonal values, highlighted with much higher order and rigor in the case of the print.

It’s surprising the verticality of the pole which, targeted on the albero (sand) in the centre of the unified shadow of the beast and man, seems to symbolize the gravity and exercise of referee balance between opposite diagonals: the ascending lightness in subtle foreshortening of the bullfighter and the determined shaking down onslaught of the bull.

All the visual tension is concentrated at that point in the sand where the calagurritano thrust the pole and at the same time pointed the elongated shadow as a third character in action, the figure blurred and disproportionate of someone who, at one time, dance and wobbles. Perhaps is the Death.

Juan Apiñani has a bullring in Calahorra, of recent building because it is located in a new area of the city; only fifteen years of existence, but very crowded because of being an attractive and cozy space of neighbourhood where kids play among the presence of older who filled the ring to the arrival of good weather. The continuous activity of the youngest parish of Calahorra, located in the basement of one of its sides, increases the vitality that, because of its strategic location, already have.

 

Since 2004 the Bullfighting Club of Calahorra, which celebrates in November of the present year their golden anniversary, awards a prize to the best bullfighting time during the fair in August, which bears the name of Juan Apiñani. Made in bronze, represents Goya’s engraving characters, bull and bullfighter with pole on a pedestal. The winner of the Juan Apiñani trophy in its first edition was the prestigious rejoneador (mounted bullfighter with lance) from Navarra Pablo Hermoso de Mendoza.

It is noteworthy that the City Council has not given the name of so illustrious calagurritano to the bullring of Calahorra. Even to the present one, dating back to 1924. It is called La Planilla, because of being located in a district with the same name, located not far from the football field and the municipal cemetery. Even so, draws attention, further, that no Town Hall Administration has decided to change it since then.

Be a figure of bullfighting at the time of the Enlightenment and have been honoured to be immortalized by Goya in one of his most ingenious prints and emblematic images does not seem enough for the bullring of the town where he was born to get his name.

Something had to see in Apiñani the universal genius to leave record of his bullfighting world, and so continues watching the passage of the time to reveal him as one of the icons of all his work.

Francisco Javier Garrido Romanos

Bachelor Painter of Fine Arts from the University of Barcelona.

Among the many concomitance, likeness and similarities that, with no doubt, can be found between these two geniuses of world art, one of them and perhaps the most important is its status as Spaniards. Besides, Spaniards who lived in France exiled or, more or less, for extended stays and different reasons. But that never gave up on their status as Spaniards, as known.

Autorretrato con gorrilla • Self-portrait with cap

 

Picasso lived there a long and fruitful life and, nevertheless, Goya did for a period of nearly four years and at the end of his life (from 30^th May 1824 until his death on 16^th April 1828), with two short stays in Madrid in 1826 (when gets retirement) and in the summer of 1827 to arrange personal affairs. The reasons of its, better call them expatriations, were by their condition of Spaniards and in essence for their advanced ideas about the prevailing of the respective authorities of their country, especially in the case of Goya, and because Paris is the main point of attraction and the centre of European and universal art at the time in which Picasso decide to leave Barcelona, and start a career with more international presence.

There are not known written or verbal manifestations of Francisco de Goya in which declared their intention to become French citizen. Rather, against this, he always felt deeply close to Spain and thus expressed preferably frequenting circles of Spanish artists and intellectuals, both in Bordeaux and in the few months he visited Paris. On the other hand, Goya never spoke French, very understandable question by his advanced age and his vulnerable condition of almost absolute deaf person. And he frequented almost exclusively Spanish environments, except for a few exceptions related to artists or lithographers.

Very different case is that of Picasso, since he did live almost all his life in France. He joined completely in that country although he never renounced his Spanish condition, nor forgot his birth from Malaga and the very important stage of his life in Barcelona. It can be said without fear of mistake that there is a French Picasso, very French, not avoiding to be Spanish and very Spanish. Something that does not fit in the qualification of Goya.

 

Autorretrato de Picasso a los 20 años • Picasso’s self-portrait at age 20

 

As well, always have thought that Picasso never wanted to become naturalized French, but the truth is that he did wanted to do it at a given time: can read it in the paper entitled “Dans les secrets de la Police (Les Trésors inédits des archives de la préfecture de Police)” edited by L’Iconoclaste in 2008 and I get thanks to my good friend and colleague in the MGA, Jean-Baptiste Bourrat, Secretary-General of Editions Les Arenes.

In this book (pp. 230-231) Pascal Bonafoux reproduces the requests for ID cards made by Pablo Picasso and Olga Khokhlova, his first wife, both Spaniards according to the receipt of the respective request. Olga’s Spanish nationality is, naturally, by marriage.

But one thing is to ask a mandatory identity card for foreigners and other to ask for the nationality itself. The demand for French nationality by Picasso is a whole dossier that is part of a set of files seized by the Germans in 1940, then transferred to the USSR in 1945 and returned to the French State in 2001. The discovery of such a document, in 2004, was a great surprise: the painter never spoke of that application with none of their relatives or friends.

Pascal Bonafoux tells this in the following way: “In this month of April 1940, what does the police officer who reads and rereads parts of the dossier ‘Picasso’ knows about him, Spanish painter born on 25^th October 1881 in Malaga. The artist has just asked for his French naturalization letter. Since the beginning of the year, lively, Picasso does not know what to do. War declared on 3^rd September 1939 drives him crazy. Entrusted to his secretary Sabartés: “If they make war to spite me, they have taken things too far, don’t you think?”

 

Solicitud de nacionalidad francesa, firmada por Picasso • Application of French nationality, signed by Picasso

 

He is helpless. Repeatedly, just coming and going between Paris and Royan, where, since the beginning of the year, rents the second floor of the villa of the Voiliers. The owner has seen nobody there but himself and his faithful Sabartés. The painter feels there on neutral ground, so far from Dora Maar as from Marie-Thérèse.

 

Anarchist or Communist?

The police officer ignores without a doubt that Picasso has given command of packing his canvases from La Boetie Street and Des Grands-Augustins in dozens of boxes, an endeavor so difficult “as dismantling the Louvre”. On the contrary, knows that this painter is famous… How to ignore that? “Guernica”, at the Spanish Pavilion of the International Exhibition, has shocked. If, in the eyes of the critic of art Jean Cassou, “expresses our more intimate tragedy”, in revenge certain leaders of the Spanish Republic have condemned a painting “antisocial, ridiculous and totally inadequate”.

What to be admired by if, convicted by the communists, this painter would not be anarchist, as described in an old report of 1901. But the friendship that links him with Èluard would make comprehensive that he was a communist? France at war, no doubt wondered this official, does need to give such individual the nationality? When even, according to Cocteau, gets “a life of homeless under a golden bridge” The Administration will leave this request without response.

 

Cajas, procedentes de Moscú, conservadas por la Policía francesa. • Boxes, from Moscow, preserved by the French police.

 

The truth is that Picasso, coinciding with the invasion of Denmark and Norway by the troops of Hitler, officially requested French nationality and makes it to the entitled authority on 3^rd April 1940. This juicy and interesting information is widely advanced by Armand Israël in the book written together with Pierre Dax and with the title “Pablo Picasso. Dossiers of the préfecture de police 1901 – 1940” was published by Éditions Acatos in 2003.

On 23^rd April the French Ministry of Justice requested to the Préfecture of police the opening of an inquiry that allows forming an opinion on the request. For this purpose, on 26^th April police station of la Madeleine invites Picasso to 7^th May and ask for a documentation which, in summary, corresponds to an affidavit of not having ever convicted in France nor Spain, or in any other country; his income tax for 1939; copy of his lease on the property of the 23 rue de la Boétie; a domicile certificate, signed by the housekeeper, who effectively certifies that Picasso lived there since 1918 and it also adds the visa of the police inspector of the district.

Regarding this request the French administration issued two reports, one by mentioned police station of the 8^th Arrondissement, which has a formal character of police of proximity; this 9 page report is favourable and consists of statements, documents and reports on marital and family status of the person concerned, address, his conduct, morality and his loyalty to France and his military situation, his will in assimilation, his social utility and his health; also on his economic situation in which, by the way, represents that Picasso had paid 700,000 francs of taxes in year 1939; his clean criminal records are added and it is concluded, on 30^th April 1940 with: “Good reports, favourable opinion”.

End of Part I