Colecciones de arte

Portrait of Alberto Lasplaces, c. 1920

FICHA TÉCNICA
Portrait of Alberto Lasplaces, c. 1920
Oil on canvas, 78 X 60 cm.

Writer, essayist, journalist and professor, Alberto Lasplaces was born in Montevideo in 1887 and died in the capital city in 1950. Editor of La Cruz del Su r, one of the most important cultural magazines of his time, Lasplaces became especially renowned as an international political analyst in El Día . Barradas and Lasplaces knew each other in their youth. They fully experienced the intense cultural activity in Montevideo at the start of the century and they were both represented in magazines such as Bohemia and La Semana at the time.

In an article published in 1939, Lasplaces himself recalled the circumstances that inspired the portrait that his compatriot painted of him in Madrid in 1920. Barradas was experiencing a good moment. His work with Martínez Sierra for the Eslava Theater had given him a brief economic respite--perhaps the only one in his life--; his relationship with the artistic milieu of the Spanish capital was beginning to become established and his work at the time was among the best of his production: that which was realized between the years 1917 and 1923. When he was reunited with Lasplaces, the painter was 30 years old.

"The Barradas of 1920 in Madrid," claims Lasplaces "was exactly the same as the one in Montevideo in 1910: the same elongated and angular face, the same ivory paleness, the same thin-lipped grin, the same indecisive look behind his thick-lensed glasses, the same head of limp black hair falling at times in disheveled tufts upon his pensive forehead. And the same sharp-toned male voice, the same expressive gestures, and the same enthusiasm towards his art which possessed him entirely and the same warmth in friendship and convictions. And even including the same way of dressing: the black suit, the flowing tie, his typical wide-brimmed hat." That is to say, the Barradas of the avant-garde, whose enthusiasm rubbed off on others and who overcame all of his difficulties and who fully experienced the to be or not to b e of what was considered a new form of painting, maintained in his appearance aspects of his bohemian adolescence, dating back to the start of the century, which he would most likely never abandon.

When he arrived in Madrid, Lasplaces did not find Barradas in his first home on León Street. Julio J. Casal, consular representative of Uruguay in A Coruña and tireless editor of the extremely worthwhile magazine Alfar , gave him the address. This piece of information indicates that in 1920 Casal and Barradas were already in contact. The painter had moved to Atocha Street, which was the best of his settings as an artist. Lasplaces had the chance to accompany him in his passage through the capital, which would be most identified in his painting: the passage from the Mediodía Station (then popularly known as Pacífico ) to the Puerta de Atocha.

After quickly and accurately making a sketch of the writer using India ink, he redid it using oil paint. Lasplaces himself recalled the experience in which, quickly, with few sessions and "without hesitation or touch-ups, without remorse or corrections" Barradas created while both were continuously talking about one thing or another. For whatever reasons, probably because the painter did not wish to get rid of it, Lasplaces did not walk away with the painting. Nor did he manage to get the preparatory sketch, that Barradas would end up giving to Casal. But the small private history of this work would not end there. As Raquel Pereda relates years later, around 1927, when Barradas was living in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat--praised by everyone but separated from the front line of activity--Lasplaces wanted to get his portrait back. From Montevideo, with Casal as mediator, Lasplaces proposed a deal to Barradas: his portrait for more or less 1,000 pesetas. The courteous nature of his proposal, avoiding the use of the word buy had a basis: not to offend Barradas whose economic situation was extremely precarious and whose physical condition was gradually deteriorating. Furthermore, the exchange involved the promise to expose the painting in Montevideo as a preamble to the definitive return of the artist.

All of these charming anecdotes do not detract from the intensity of Barradas's work. In a rather unexpected way, the artist once again proposes and resolves problems that the avant-garde had suggested in its onset: the idea of the painting as a two-dimensional surface, the concentration of the concept of the art of painting in itself, the homogeneous treatment of the fabric, the similarity of treatment between form and figure, the coming together of abstraction and imagination. And Barradas added to all of these a new solution: the quantitative presence of what is imagined. All these problems were tackled by Picasso and Braque between 1909 and the end of 1911, and by Juan Gris and the Cubist School between 1911 and 1914. Barradas differs from them in several important ways: he avoids geometry and the fragmenting that alludes to the figures by choosing them with synecdoche or metonymy. The artist proceeds by using chromatic pieces (almost cameos) that little by little form chiaroscuro, and which appear only from the grouping of brushstrokes. One could say that Barradas is, in this and other similar works, more like Cézanne than Parisian cubism itself ever was. This is how Barradas reconstructs the corporeity of the character that is represented, including his gesture and accent, thereby lending to the work aspects of the psychology of art that original cubism never dealt with.

What needs to be asked is why Barradas draws up these pictorial proposals in 1920 when Parisian cubism itself is of a very different position. Furthermore, how could Barradas employ cubist models if between 1918 and 1923 he did not leave Madrid and in the Spanish capital collections of this sort did not exist? Was he working with reproductions? If so, we do not know which ones. Did he retain what he had seen in Paris and Milan, where in both cases his stay was brief, in order to unexpectedly bring them back six years later? It seems unlikely.

I believe that the questions raised in all of these issues can be resolved if we look at the matter from a different perspective. Barradas's peers who commented upon his work both referred to and did not refer to cubism when speaking of this moment of his production, and if they did, they were sure to differentiate it from original cubism, no matter how clear the similarity was. Cubism is present in the work of Barradas not because of a transferring of copied models, but rather because Barradas was an artist whose will was always to synthesize and use as a repertoire plastic solutions from the first avant-garde. Until 1922 or 1923 the artist remained firm and consistent in this position, using concrete solutions to concrete problems. The character represented, seated and still, expresses, nonetheless, an undeniable and suggestive sensation of vitality. One could say that the entire work throbs when viewed. Creating this sensation was what most interested Barradas between the end of 1918 and 1921. If, in order to achieve it, he had to turn to solutions that blended with those of original cubism, the painter would not hesitate in doing so, regardless of the urgency or last-minute quality that the Modern Movement was experiencing at the time. He was interested in the poetic nature of what was considered modern as a category, not an anecdote. Furthermore, Polish painter and art critic, Marjan Paszkiewicz was nearing this category at the time. And to relate Paszkiewicz's theories and comments to this particular moment in the life of Barradas would not, in all probability, be an easy task. E.C.

An inscription on the frame indicates that the ownership of the painting is credited to the heirs of Alberto Lasplaces.

ORIGIN

Artist's collection / Lasplaces Collection, Montevideo / Matriz Gallery, Montevideo / Sur Gallery, Montevideo.

EXPOSITIONS

Barradas / Torres-García , Buenos Aires, National Fine Arts Museum, 1995, reproduced nº 40, p. 54.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

PEREDA, RAQUEL, Barradas , Latina Gallery, Montevideo, 1989, pp. 123 y 208, reproduced p. 126.

(1) LASPLACES, ALBERTO, "Rafael Barradas en Madrid", El Día, Supplement, Montevideo, February 26, 1939, Year VIII, nº320. Cited by PAREDA, RAQUEL, Barradas , Latin Gallery, Montevideo, 1989, p.123. Everything that is quoted in the text, unless otherwise indicated, belongs to the same text.

(2) En op.cit., note 1, p. 208.

(3) See, Carmona, Eugenio , «Rafael Barradas y el "Arte Nuevo" en España, 1917-1925», Barradas. Exposición Antológica, 1890-1929 , Madrid, Zaragoza, Barcelona, Community of Madrid, Gobierno de Aragón, Generalitat de Catalunya, 1992-1993, In the care of Jaime Bríhuega y Concha Lomba, pp.122-124.