At the Los Serrano Palace, until February 2008
Ávila opens the largest anthology on the painter López Mezquita
He was qualified as & nbsp; “the Mozart of Painting” & nbsp; and is considered one of the best portraitists in the history of painting in Spain. All the stages of his career can now be seen in the nearly 90 pieces that make up & nbsp; ‘López Mezquita. From Granada to New York ‘, which can be seen at the Los Serrano Palace in the capital of Avila until February 3.
The Obra Social de Caja de Ávila, in collaboration with various entities, especially the Hispanic Society of America in New York, as well as with private collectors, such as the author’s own family or Félix López, becomes the last stop of this exhibition Itinerant that was inaugurated in December of last year in Granada and that has visited some of the most significant cities in the life of the Granada-born artist.
It ends, precisely, in the city where he spent his last winter and where, as explained by the exhibition’s curator, Javier Pérez Rojas, he painted numerous works that made him known, among other things, for his portraits of regional types and traditional scenes.
It was in Ávila, as recalled by the president of Caja de Ávila, Agustín González, where he installed one of his studios, next to the church of San Martín, and where he longed to open a museum, a desire truncated by the great economic depression that hit society at a time when the realist-avant-garde current had in López Mezquita one of its greatest exponents.
Due to its connection with Ávila, in this sense, the anthological and chronological exhibition that can already be visited at the Los Serrano Palace, Caja de Ávila’s cultural space in the city, includes a “special section” dedicated exclusively to works made during the different periods. that López Mezquita spent in the capital of Avila.
Carmina Fernández, his daughter-in-law, who attended the opening of the exhibition in the company of the artist’s granddaughter, was, in this sense, & nbsp; “grateful” & nbsp; to the entities that have made possible take this project forward, especially Caja de Ávila, as it is the last stop of the exhibition, in the city where & nbsp; “he painted pictures that he later walked around the world, saying that he was happy just contemplating these walls of Ávila” .
For all these reasons, the exhibition is subtitled & nbsp; ‘Times and itineraries of a cosmopolitan painter: from Granada to New York’ , taking into account that José María López Mezquita was a & nbsp; “young prodigy with exceptional gifts for painting who had a surprising ascent “.
From La Granadina (1900-01) that has been selected for the covers of the catalogs published on the occasion of this exhibition to the Seminarians of Ávila (1952) on loan from the Hispanic Society of America, passing through El wake (1910), the Odalisque (1918) or the Portrait of Miguel de Unamuno (1926), the exhibition that can be seen in Ávila is a review and update of the painter’s work and places a greater emphasis on lesser-known pieces that are made known for the first time in Spain .