José Gutiérrez Solana - Contra la vanguardia

José Gutiérrez Solana (Madrid, 1886-1945) is a fascinating and complex figure. He is often considered the leading exponent of “España negra”, although he was much more than that. His image has been defined by various biographers, although it is Ramón Gómez de la Serna and Manuel Sánchez Camargo who have established an idea conditioned by clichés and anecdotes that he himself spread. A painter of unique intensity, he combined successes and errors in a conception of painting that was difficult to categorise in the years of the European avant-garde. A fierce realist, he was the notary of Spanish rural cruelty both in his paintings and in his books. His passage into history through masterpieces such as “La tertulia del Café Pombo” should be complemented with an extensive production of small paintings in the form of the diary of an almost literary life, extremely difficult in his childhood and blackened by the weight of experience.