Museo Julio Romero de Torres

About

The Julio Romero de Torres Museum is a museum located in the city of Córdoba, Spain, which is notable for containing the largest collection of the famous Cordoban painter Julio Romero de Torres. It is located in the building of the old Hospital of la Caridad, which also houses the Museum of Fine Arts of Córdoba. The museum has been declared a Bien de Interés Cultural in the category of monument since 1962.

After the death of Julio Romero de Torres on May 10, 1930, Francisca Pellicer, widow of the painter, and their children, Rafael, Amalia and María, decided to create a museum dedicated to the memory of the artist, bequeathing it to the city of Córdoba. So, on November 23, 1931, the museum was created and inaugurated by the president of the republic, Niceto Alcalá Zamora. In 1934, the adjoining house was purchased, and the current museum was inaugurated on May 24, 1936. The last remodeling dates back to 1992, for the installation of lighting and security systems, as well as for the renovation of part of the structures of the museum.

The Order of July 7, 1997, agrees the entry of this museum in the Register of Museums of Andalusia (BOJA 91 of August 7, 1997).

The Decision of February 25, 1998 of the General Directorate of Historical Heritage Institutions publishes the list of museums registered and annotated preventively in the Registry of Museums of Andalusia, among which is found in: BOJA 38 of April 4, 1998.

With the Resolution of December 19, 2001, a subsidy of 1,200,000 Spanish pesetas (€7,212.15) is granted. (BOJA 20 February 16, 2002).

In June 2005, the museum closed its doors for its renovation, as well as for the restoration of the Hospital de la Caridad, which owns the building where the museum is. On January 24, 2012, the museum reopened its doors, receiving in its first 5 days almost 5.000 visitors.

Julio Romero de Torres shared the French poster movement as an advertising medium, and he conducted a series of works whereby he was integrated into the new movement.

In Cordoba, he painted La Feria del ganado of 1897, Ferias y Fiestas of 1902, and La Feria de Nuestra Señora de la Salud of 1905, 1912, 1913 and 1916. The Winery Cruz-Conde commissioned him the advertisement of their wines and the popular Anisette labels "La Cordobesa".

In Madrid, he made the poster of La corrida patriótica in 1921 for the benefit of the victims of the Battle of Annual, and he made for the Spanish Explosives Factory Riotinto four calendar posters of 1924, 1925, 1929 and the one published in 1931.

The museum preserves original paintings in which the artist had the knowledge to combine the modernist influences with the aspects of his homeland. This room in the museum's vestibule is completed by several display cabinets with publications, manuscripts and tickets dedicated to the painter.

The circumstances that surrounded the painter are present in this room, which is dedicated to his memory. It contains photographic reproductions of his parents and siblings of their family house in Cordoba, of the painter's studio in Madrid, and of the successes achieved in 1922 in Argentina at the Witcomb Gallery in Buenos Aires.

Furniture that accompanied him all his life: bargueños, ceramics, copper utensils that were frequent motifs on his canvases. His guitar, cape and hat can be seen in the display cabinet, his paintings, palette and brushes, and the issuance of stamps in homage to his figure, introduce us to the world of this creator.

Some representative works, in line with social painting, that marked his first steps in painting are: Look how pretty she was!, awarded with the Honorable Mention in the National Exhibition of 1895; Hours of distress, a drawing of great dimensions. And, finally, a portrait of Maria Teresa Lopez with a nun's habit, which is his last unfinished work left on the easel. All these works set us in his living scene.

This exhibition hall is dedicated to women and it gathers much of the most archetypal paintings of his career: La chiquita piconera, Romero de Torres's most famous painting; Viva el pelo, La Copla, which were painted during his last years of life.

Female nude is the predominant genre and it stars in a series of paintings wherein the painter displays his imagination in order to develop plots based on the main motif of these paintings: the woman. Some examples are En la Ribera, La nieta de la Trini, Ofrenda al arte torero, Naranjas y Limones and Contrariedad.

The rest of the exhibition shows the portraits of the actress Marichu Begoña, inseparable from the author and depicted as the goddess of the hunt Diana with the greyhound Pacheco, a nd the Sevillian artist Conchita Triana; the facial expression studies he performed with his last model in Córdoba (María Teresa López) in Bendición, La niña de la Jarra, Carmen, Ángeles y Mujer de Córdoba and, finally, his own bronze bust, crafted by Mariano Benlliure in 1931.

Romero de Torres was essentially a portrait painter. He painted political and literary figures as well as more social celebrities: he carried out more than five hundred portraits. The Cordoban ministers of Justice and Defence, Antonio Barroso y Castillo and Diego Muñoz-Cobos y Serrano; the socialist deputy Margarita Nelken; the writer Cristóbal de Castro, from Iznájar, and the Sevillian poet Joaquín Alcaida Zafra appear in this hall's portraits.

Countless were the orders he received from high society ladies: Concepción Ruíz Frías, wife of the minister Natalio Rivas Santiago; María Aguilar or the countess of Colomera, Magdalena Muñoz-Cobos, dressed as the queen of 1930 Floral Games in an unfinished portrait.

Elena Pardo, one of his favourite models, is the protagonist of two studies, Mary Luz and Marta, which are part of the group the artist named as Chiquitas buenas.

The mystical work of Julio Romero, a combination of religiosity and paganism, is gathered in this room in a series of paintings influenced by the Baroque painters of the 17th century Antonio del Castillo and Valdés Leal.