Julio Romero de Torres

NOTE:

THIS WORK IS ACCOMPANIED BY A CERTIFICATE OF AUTHENTICITY ISSUED BY MERCEDES VALVERDE

PROVENANCE

The collection of Alberto E. Grimoldi of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Private collection, Madrid.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

This work titled “Consultando el sino” appears documented in the second edition of the book “Romero de Torres” by Pedro Massa. Luis D. Álvarez, Buenos Aires, 1947, page 27.

LITERATURE

We identify the model as Carmen Gabucio Sánchez Mármol, born in 1900, in Palma de Mallorca. Daughter of Mallorcan Manuel Gabucio Maroto and the Mexican Berta Sánchez Mármol Cortes. She was one of Julio Romero de Torres' favorite models in the last period of its production.

The racial beauty of “Camisita” as the painter called her, made her being the protagonist of the well-known painting “Virgen de los Faroles”, where she posed for the image of the virgin and for the nun Franciscan woman who appears in profile to the right of the composition. This work was commissioned by the Córdoba City Council and its Mayor Cruz Conde to decorate an altar on the north wall of the Córdoba Cathedral, former Mosque, which had burned. It was inaugurated on August 15, 1928 and in 1935 for its conservation and protection, went to the Julio Romero Museum of Towers.

Among other works where he chose Carmen Gabucio as a model, it was for the poster of the Spanish Union of Explosives of 1931. Work that the artist left finished before his death on May 10, 1930. It is one of the four posters he made.

The Julio Romero de Torres de Córdoba Museum, preserves a sketch, portrait of Carmen Babucio “Camisita”, unfinished head, which could well be the precursor to the “Consultando el sino” painting.

Finally, in the Photo Library of the Heritage Institute of the Ministry of Culture and Sports with the signature 31705_B we have identified a new painting by Carmen Gabucio.

Carmen appears in the foreground of the composition looking at the spectator, dressed in a simple blouse and skirt. Before her in a table, we observe the Spanish deck where she herself is laying down the cards as a way of interpreting his future, the symbology of the deck is very present in Julio's works Romero de Torres.

The model shows the Ace of Wands in her right hand, a motif of surprise, something unexpected. In his left hand, the Two of Pentacles indicating dilemma, duality, double option. A jug of Andújar ceramics complete the foreground. At the bottom of the composition the façade of the Sanctuary appears in darkness Cordoba of Fuensanta.

Biography of Carmen Gabucio "Camisita"

Carmen's life was an adventure from her birth, her father, a Mallorcan immigrant, settled in Tabasco, around 1887, creating commercial and maritime companies, marrying the daughter of a renowned politician and writer Berta Sánchez Mármol Cuts.

The couple had 10 children, highlighting their son Aníbal who participated in the Mexican Revolution of 1910 and later came to Spain to take part in the Spanish Civil War as a lieutenant artillery colonel, in charge of the defense of Madrid under the orders of Kléber.

There is abundant bibliography that we provide where you can see reflected the life of his sister Carmen and that we took textually, being the most authoritative document, the text of the study by Benjamín Flores Hernández from the University Autonomous Community of Aguas Calientes whose title is “Hispano-Mexican Migration. A case of round trip: Lieutenant Colonel Aníbal Gabucio.”

…” Another daughter: Carmen. Model for the Virgin of the Lanterns.

Carmen, who lied that she was born on January 1, 1901, when in reality he was a year younger, he got married before celebrating 20 years with an Asturian journalist and writer - it seems that particularly important as a poet - Alfonso Camín (Porces, Gijón 1890- Porces 1982) quite older than her and who would have to live almost the century. At that time Camín was directing in the city of Mexico the magazine “Don Quixote”, at the service of the Hispanic colony. When he married, his mother dedicated a madrigal to him.” dating in 1922.

They soon separated, after having only one son, Manuel Camín Gabucio, who would be a journalist at “Excélsior” until he died in 1990, before his mother and where he directed “Últimas Noticias". Once divorced, she went to Spain, where she arrived around 1925.

…” She did everything, among other things as a chorus girl at the Apolo theater: At that time he met José Antonio Primo de Rivera, who was “boyfriend” of a classmate of hers. He came into contact with the rocks artistic and literary works that were shining in Madrid at that time and He particularly attended the one frequented by Ramón del Valle Inclán - who told him that she reminded him of the “Chole Girl” -, the Mexican heroine of his “Sonata de Estío” and Julio Romero of Torres (Córdoba 1874-1930) with whom he became intimate and with whom served as a model for several paintings, the best known and titled “The Virgin of the Lanterns”… Shortly before starting the war, He joined the phalanx and in the first days after July 18, helped many people take refuge in the Mexican embassy which he got this way for his Mexican passport…

She was betrayed and was accused of spying; she said that by her own brother Hannibal and was held prisoner until the end of the war in Madrid and Murcia. Sentenced to death, she got that the sentence was not carried out... Once released on the 9th of March 1939 he continued to frequent intellectual circles, among his great friends he counted Emilio Carrere, the poet of the Madrid bohemia who dedicated several articles to him and Cesar González-Ruano… He liked to write poetry and retired as employed at the Madrid Bar Association. With more than 90 years in 1993 her little sister moved her to Cuernavaca where he died a few months later.

Other publications such as the doctoral thesis of Javier Cervera Gil “Political violence and clandestine action: The rearguard of Madrid at war (1936-1939)” from the Complutense University of

Madrid, Faculty of Geography and History, cite the intervention of Carmen Gabucio in the organization of the Falange leadership clandestine, called the Fifth Column. We have located in the newspaper of “La Marina” of Havana of April 18 and 30, 1937 news that documents this political stage of the model Julio Romero de Torres.

Finally, the newspaper “El País” on March 3, 2009 in the article by Juan Cruz that he says to Francisco Nieva, there is a memory for Carmen Gabucio.

…”Of course, he says where he lives, in Concepción Jerónima and he gets a torrent of events: There Valle went to meet his friend Romero de Torres and there he met Carmen Gabucio, the mistress of the painter, whom Valle called the Chole girl and I called her I knew that she was so old, she was Mexican and what mole she did…”

Galería Luis Carvajal would like to thank Mercedes Valverde for his help in cataloguing this painting.

Julio Romero de Torres

(Córdoba, 1880 - 1930) Spanish painter. He was the son of the Andalusian painter and teacher Rafael Romero Barros, director of the Museum of Fine Arts of Córdoba, who started him on the path of painting from an early age. Thus, already in 1907 the young Julio Romero de Torres was able to attend the exhibition of independent painters held at the Círculo de Bellas Artes (Madrid).

The melodramatic realism of his first compositions (such as Conciencia tranquil or Vividoras del amor) did not seem to prelude the personal style, so marked and characteristic, that he later brought to light in his mature work. In fact, following the canvas titled Gypsy Musa - which won First Prize at a National Exhibition held in Madrid - the painter from Córdoba adopted a nationalist and folkloric line, attentive to southern topics and focused mainly on the portrait of the Andalusian woman It is a style in which the mixture of realistic portraiture with a certain idealistic air predominates, placing its figures in a vague timeless halo, as if trying to make the physical characteristics of Andalusian women a universal archetype of feminine beauty.

Supported by the modernist canons in force at his time, he achieved success - not exempt from a virulent critical controversy that always accompanied the artistic judgment of his painting - in several national and international exhibitions, such as those held in Barcelona (1911), in Madrid (1912) and in Munich (1913). But the truth is that in his time he was acclaimed by painters, writers and contemplators of his work, who celebrated the exaltation of the nationalist clichés spread by the work of Romero de Torres; To prove it, it is enough to remember that the monographs of his painting and the catalogs of his exhibitions were authorized by laudatory comments from authors such as Jacinto Benavente, Ramón María del Valle-Inclán, Gregorio Martínez Sierra or Santiago Rusiñol.

A standard-bearer of a romanticism that is certainly outdated today but very much to the taste of the people of his time, Julio Romero de Torres resolved in each of his paintings a problem posed in the form of an Andalusian copla, a bullfighting bout or an episode from a gypsy ballad. He also placed special emphasis on the tragic and legendary sentiments inherent in the religiosity and culture of his countrymen, which explains the immense popularity he enjoyed both during his lifetime and many years after his death.

For a long time the most popular homes in rural Spain displayed reproductions of Romero de Torres's main works, almost always decorating the large pages of enormous almanacs. His memory was also kept alive in folkloric coplas and tonadillas, and was present for some time in the illustrations of stamps and paper money. Today, a good part of his work - which has been rather discredited by modern critics - can be seen in the House Museum that the city of Cordoba has dedicated to one of its most universal artists.