Museo Carmen Thyssen

The almost ninety works in this exhibition tell a story unbounded by norms, offering a subjective survey designed to stimulate both the mind and the senses of viewers as they explore more than a century of very diverse nudes in Spanish art. In a country with no historical tradition in a genre that was central to artists elsewhere, individuals only really began to be represented au naturel in the modern period – in the late 1800s and especially in the first third of the 1900s – as a rebellion against the academic ideal and a gradual revelation of the body. The nude thus went from being an intended universal canon of physical perfection, used by the ancient Greeks to give human form to gods and standardised by the Academy for centuries as a synonym for beauty, to an avant-garde depiction of the physical diversity of a far from idyllic humankind. Decorum, moral and social prejudice, and the apparent neutrality of purely artistic portrayals of almost exclusively mythological or historical subjects gave way to unprejudiced and provocative interpretations, to a true nakedness of the nude.

The freedom to rebel against centuries of modest and academic nudes and see beyond the merely anatomical aspect of the body triggered an unstoppable paradigm shift among the Spanish renewal-oriented and avant-garde movements, especially in the 1920s and 1930s. Carnality prevailed over the ideal and the most interesting and exciting possibilities of the nude were discovered. The contemporary body thus became a fertile ground for artistic exploration and self-knowledge.

However, no sooner had the modern nude embarked on this path of formal and expressive experimentation than it was newly burdened by 19th-century stigmas throughout much of Franco’s dictatorship. Constrained by the regime’s censorship, artists sought refuge in official exhibitions, returning to academic languages, engaged in provocation from the fringes or from exile, and camouflaged nudes in abstract forms.

Perfect beings versus fragmented bodies, nudes depicted in relation to a theme or with no pretext; male gazes challenged by empowered female bodies; live models and disturbing mannequins; bodies that are figurative or deconstructed, young and old, male, female and ambiguous, exposed or observed without permission... the nudes shown in the exhibition, from those of Sorolla and early Picasso to Saura and late Miró, come in a variety and very broad range of forms. And yet this is just one of the many possible stories of the nude.

Imágenes:
Ignacio Pinazo. Desnudo de frente, c.1879-1880. Óleo sobre lienzo, 183 x 99 cm. Museo Nacional de Cerámica “González Martí"
Antoni Arissa, El esclavo, c. 1922-1929, Gelatina de plata sobre papel de algodón, 750 × 640 mm (copia actual), Colección Telefónica © Antoni Arissa
Gabriel Morcillo, Dios de la fruta, 1936. Óleo sobre lienzo, 125 x 115 cm. Colección Banco de España, depositado en el Museo de Bellas Artes de Granada

The American photographer Imogen Cunningham (1883–1976) was born in Portland, Oregon, into a humble farming family. Her father Isaac Cunningham, a freethinker and voracious reader, instilled a love of art and nature in Imogen, the eldest of six siblings.

In the early 1900s Cunningham studied chemistry at the University of Washington in Seattle, a discipline that enabled her to learn about and explore in depth the technical possibilities of photography. Her first paid job as a photographer involved making slides for the university's botany department. After a short stay in Europe she opened a studio in Seattle and became known for her portraits and pictorialist compositions, which were all the rage at the time.

In 1917, by then married to the printmaker Roi Partridge, she moved to California, where her children were born. Imogen focused on raising them, but did not stop taking unusually modern photographs of her immediate surroundings, especially the plants in her garden and her friends. Her predilection for exploring forms reveals one of the main keys to her work: reducing nature to its simplest structures. This surprisingly plastic, experimental language alters scale with closeup views and matter through the effects of light and shadow.

In California she was a founder of Group f/64, an association that promoted straight photography (taking pictures without intervention either in the laboratory or in the developing process) and enjoyed great prestige on the American scene.

The pictures she took from the 1920s onwards, full of strength and lyricism, express a sensual perception of nature. And that is what we find in this exhibition – an assortment of photographs of plants and nudes from the José Luis Soler Vila Collection that surveys her most outstanding production. The selection features specimens from the plant kingdom and naked bodies as objects of desire. These exquisitely delicate images reveal a concern with capturing textures, volumes, lines, shadows and details of universal beauty.

This exhibition reaffirms the importance of the legacy of a fundamental figure in the history of twentieth-century photography. A creator who tirelessly explored the essences of her universe until her death at the age of 93.

Pictures:
Imogen Cunningham. Magnolia Blossom, 1925. Silver Gelatin Print.
Imogen Cunningham. Nude, 1939. Silver Gelatin Print.

Colección José Luis Soler Vila, Valencia
© 2024 Imogen Cunningham Trust / www.ImogenCunningham.com