La cara B de la historia del arte

The artists that were sent to the Rejection Room were those that, funnily enough, achieved acceptance in art history. The more academic, purist and formalist ones were forgotten in favour of the audacious and more modern pictorial expressions of Cézanne, Monet or Pissarro.

This exhibition, which can be seen until May 3rd at the Mapfre Foundation (Paseo de Recoletos, 23) tries to do justice with those 19th-century artists that today are mostly unknown to the general public despite the unquestionable quality of their works. Under the title The Swan Song. Academic Paintings of the Paris Salon, this exhibition looks at the culmination of traditional figurative art, which is completed with paintings lent by the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.

There are large paintings and ambitious ones within formal standards, but also on the subjects, with new visions of sacred texts and scenes of the Old Testament under a new prism. An example of this is the work by Léon Bonnat that represents Job, with a shaped expression on his face. There are also historical scenes, such as the painting dedicated to the Romanisation of Gaul, or a surprising painting that depicts pilgrimage to Mecca on a camel, one of Léon Adolphe Belly’s most popular works.

The portrait was another cultivated technique of the time, despite that photographs were already doing their job in that field. The mark of painting was still synonymous for prestige, as the painting dedicated to Victor Hugo show, extraordinary yet with an innocent expression, almost lost; or even the one of Marcel Proust, which most visitors will recognise immediately. There are also nudes, another subject that these academic painters treated with respect without renouncing to sensuality and that serve as a fitting ending to one of the most interesting and coherent exhibitions that you can see in Madrid today.

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Categories: Madrid Eventos