Museo Carmen Thyssen

The encounter between these three works by José Gutiérrez Solana (1886–1945), made possible by the collaboration of the Banco Santander Collection, brings viewers face to face with strange and disturbing depictions of customs. Outstanding examples of the artist's painting and of one of his main themes, they represent an independent approach, unique in the early 20th-century Spanish art scene, that developed in parallel to, yet on the fringes of, the country’s first avant-garde trends.

A key interpreter of the so-called ‘Black Spain’, in these scenes of brothels and cabarets in poor districts Solana presents a sordid, decadent, vulgar and ugly picture of the society and life of his time, but with no critical intent. The faces of his wax doll-like figures are expressionless and ordinary, the nudity is devoid of any eroticism, and the women, interrupted at a moment of intimacy, are neither seductive nor surprised. They are simply there, watching time pass, to be gazed at by a spectator who takes on the role of an uneasy voyeur.

The frieze-like arrangement of the composition, the narrow space and the black outlines that silhouette the forms heighten the sensation of sinister unreality and transform into still life these paintings of frozen figures with no communication between them who are distant and even menacing to outsiders gazing at them. Solana's ability to mix ‘the living with the dead, the dead with the living, with an unhealthy voluptuousness’, as Antonio Machado wrote, arouses fascination and repulsion in equal measures in viewers who contemplate these paintings.

Entering into a relevant dialogue with the Spanish fin-de-siècle paintings on display in this room of the Museo Carmen Thyssen, these works with their overwhelming presence invite us to explore the personal world of José Gutiérrez Solana and his pursuit of a true portrait of his time, which he captured in his paintings and his literary output in an absolutely original style.

José Gutiérrez Solana, Women dressing (Village Chorus Girls), c. 1933. Oil on canvas, 173 x 225 cm. Banco Santander Collection. © José Gutiérrez Solana, VEGAP, Málaga, 2023.

José Gutiérrez Solana, The Slum Brothel (The Slum Girls), c. 1934. Oil on canvas, 160 x 230 cm. Banco Santander Collection. © José Gutiérrez Solana, VEGAP, Málaga, 2023.

José Gutiérrez Solana, Chorus Girls, 1927. Oil on canvas, 160 x 211 cm. Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza, on loan at the Museo Carmen Thyssen Málaga. © José Gutiérrez Solana, VEGAP, Málaga, 2023.