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Portrait of Antonio, c. 1920-1922

FICHA TÉCNICA
Portrait of Antonio, c. 1920-1922
Oil on canvas, 59 X 46 cm, 56 x 46 cm

The work has been incorrectly referred to on occasion as Antonio at the Piano

Antonio de Ignacios was the pseudonym that Antonio Pérez Giménez, brother of Rafael Barradas, used as a writer. Born in Montevideo as well, he was three years younger than the painter and lived until 1963, many years after the death of his brother. In 1917 he traveled to Spain with his family to join the artist. Since then he made a habit of accompanying his brother, except during his constant trips back and forth to Uruguay where he acted as representative for the artist, who never abandoned the idea of return to his native land.

As a writer, the fortune of Antonio de Ignacias was meager, although he was published in some Spanish magazines of the time. He began with Un Enemic del Poble, moved to, Tableros , from there to Horizonte and Alfar With the painter already deceased, De Ignacios's book of poems Fragmentarismo (1929 was published in Montevideo, and he became editor of the magazine Andresillo . In 1953 his Historial de Rafael Barradas where, as Juan Manuel Bonet has pointed out, "interesting clues and impressions are mixed" was published. In Montevideo he, along with his sister Carmen, was in charge of the Private Barradas Gallery, which was dedicated to handling the great number of works that were left by the artist.

If Antonio de Ignacios was a writer, Carmen, the sister of Antonio and Rafael, was a noteworthy composer and pianist. Although their financial status was precarious, the Barradas family was deeply involved in a creative environment, partly due to the fact that their father was also a painter. As a self-taught man, it is fitting to highlight, the libertarian whims of Barradas's youth, his taste for the bohemian lifestyle that always accompanied him, and his interest in popular scenes and characters, which, to a certain extent, detracted from his professional image. Barradas was always a cultural artist. His fundamental social options were options that were ideologically placed.

On numerous occasions Antonio appeared in Rafael's paintings and drawings, whether family portraits or individual ones. Among the family portraits, the oil painting from the Magnat Collection is worth highlighting. It was done in a modality that the painter called cubist , though its whereabouts remain unknown. We became familiar with it through reproductions that were published by De Ignacios himself, and it is apparently a very interesting work. There also exist, among the individual portraits of Antonio, very important pieces done by Barradas. It even appears that the painter utilized the image of his brother, just as he did with his wife and sister Carmen, to assure his successive poetic plastics. Two works are especially noteworthy. One of them, signed in 1918, is a vibrationist style watercolor with collage , constructed with layers of color (Montevideo, MAPV, 3148). The glued paper that was introduced into the work is a cutting of a photogravure from a magazine that reproduces the group photograph paying homage to Benito Pérez Galdós, who was already an elderly man. His motive is surprising, but there is no doubt that it is one of the most daring works the Uruguayan painter has done, if not the first utilization of the collage in plastic arts in the Spanish interior. The second work I was referring to is one of the most notable paintings of cubist modality and may have been painted between 1918 and 1919. Antonio is seen again reading, in a slight vertical foreshortening, set in a brilliant, rhythmic, and vibrant lattice, with sketched but firm shapes, and sequences of spurts of color.

The third piece is also worthy of mention. I am referring to the watercolor on paper, owned by Marcos Sasson, which was signed in 1919. Here Antonio is seen resting in a wicker rocking chair, with a closed book on his lap and his right arm extended back. He may either be dozing or thinking. The figurative suggestion used by Barradas in this work, even though the face of the figure is greatly simplified, has avoided any kind of fragmentation, whether in layers or rhythmic color sequences. Therefore the work is neither vibrationist nor cubist. This is a somewhat surprising phenomenon given the date in which the work was realized. With this, Barradas seems to anticipate future positions which are beginning to distance themselves from the language of the first isms. Although this was an exceptional measure, it leads us to think something that those who are familiar with the artist suspect from the start: the successive phases and the isms in which Barradas classified his production cannot be clearly defined. On some occasions they internally relate to or blend with each other, if in fact the painter does not suggest, as in the case of this piece, excursus , or anticipations.

This final consideration fully immerses us into the Portrait of Antonio which we are commenting upon. The piece is signed, though not dated. On a few occasions it appeared to be dated to 1920. In any case, however, it is, once again, a singular work. The protagonist, Antonio, whose body marks an impressive diagonal composite, is in the foreground seated in the wicker rocking chair that we have already seen, holding a very large book in his hands. We can easily recognize piano keys and part of a torso and the arm of the pianist In the upper left-hand corner of the painting. This is undoubtedly an allusion to Carmen Barradas. The image that Barradas gives us is, therefore, a fragment. In fact, the canvas that we are contemplating is a cutting of a much larger painting. However, even with this in mind, Barradas arranged the fabric in this way on very few occasions. Nor do we habitually see the syntax with which the figures are described: streamlined forms, elliptical curves, the chained fusion of planes, the predominance of whites and application of color using ample swoops that elude monochromatic geometry as well as the rhythmic articulation with the use of groups of fleeting brushstrokes. In both composition and technique, therefore, the work is singular. It cannot be considered either vibrationist or cubist, as we understand both terms in relation to Barradas, although due to its nature, it may participate in both modalities. Nor does the work correspond in any way to the modality known as "planismo" which, following vibrationism and cubism, the artist would develop starting in 1922. "Planismo" implies a representation of figures, a calm religiousness, a reconsideration of form, even within its abstraction, towards primary analogical mimicry. "Planismo" was Barradas's first encounter with the return to order and in this Portrait of Antonio , the impulse of the first avant-garde, though in a somewhat peculiar way, is still present. Given its clear singularity, it is tempting to relate the work to clownism , an ismic modality that the painter presented at the ultraist affair which took place at the Ateneo of Madrid in April of 1921.

This would not be the case. Although quite honestly a precise, or even approximate definition of clownism is lacking. The versión that Antonio de Ignacios offered was ambiguous. On the one hand, he relates it to principles and motivations that are characteristic of vibrationism. And on the other, to the world of caricature, to sense of humor, knowing how to laugh at oneself, in short, to the histrionic face-making of clowns and circus acrobats. Manuel Abril, on the other hand, spoke of "dolls, puppets with an immense wardrobe and props, of a universe made of cardboard and plaster and percaline. Be it as it may, in the end clownism is seen in Barradas through the face, converted into a white mask, in which the expressed emphasis of the eyebrows is pronounced. It was this iconic tendency that so influenced Dalí and Lorca, but that which is more difficult to discover in the work of Barradas than is habitually thought. In the painting that we are commenting upon, the face of Antonio, in fact, has been reduced to a mask; his eyebrows appearing quite pronounced. But such simplifications, harmonized with the shadow of the eyebrows and memory of the nose line, already appear in previous works of Barradas and they are not the ones we find in the representations of García Lorca and Maroto, which are recognized as a prototype of the artistic trend. Furthermore, the work maintains a sense of the dynamic and a set of abstract compressions of shapes that abandon, even though they are somewhat different, vibrationist and cubist formulas. In any case, it is not a completely isolated work in the production of the artist. In 1919 and 1920 we find portraits of Pilar which, to some extent, can be related to this piece. The clowns and characters from the world of the Comedy of Art appear in the work of Barradas in 1920, but stylistically they are expressed through a language which more closely resembles the cubism associated with Barradas than what could observably be clownism.

The approximate dates during which the Portrait of Antonio could have been painted are between 1919, when he painted the Portrait of Pilar , and 1922. In some way the two paintings resemble each other with the appearance of "planismo." In any case, the singularity of this piece, strengthens rather than hides, the plastic potential that it possesses as well as its importance in the context of Barradas's total production. Although once again the Portrait of Antonio reveals that the value of Barradas did not consist, preferentially or exclusively, of inventing successive creative modes, each with a different ism, but rather of having put into effect a synthesis of the languages used by the first avant-garde artists which, beyond mere mimicry, ended up producing in him suggestive and personal plastic proposals.E. C.

Signed: In the upper left-hand corner "Barradas". Not dated.

ORIGIN

Heirs of the artist/ Latina Gallery, Montevideo.

EXPOSITIONS

Barradas/ Torres-García , Buenos Aires, National Fine Arts Museum, 1995, reproduced nº37, p. 53

(1) Ignacios , Antonio De, Historial Rafael Barradas , Montevideo, 1953.

(2) Bonet , Juan Manuel , Diccionario de las vanguardias en España, 1907-1936 , Madrid, Alianza Editorial, 1995, p. 344.

(3) Regarding the clownism of Barradas, see: SANTOS TORROELLA, Rafael , «Barradas y el clownismo, con Dalí y Lorca al fondo», Rafael Barradas , Madrid, Galería Jorge Mara, 1992, pp. 25-33.

(4) De ignacios , op.cit. , pp. 84-85.

(5) Abril, Manuel , «El arte de Rafael P. Barradas», Revista de Casa América Galicia (subsequently Alfar ), nº 27, March 1923, p. 207.