To celebrate the 150th anniversary of the birth of the painter Julio Romero de Torres (Cordoba, 1874 – 1930), the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza is showing one of his most emblematic works in its galleries until 28 July: La Chiquita Piconera, executed between 1929 and 1930, shortly before the painter’s death, and considered his pictorial testament.
The painting, on loan from the Museo Julio Romero de Torres in Cordoba and with the support of Cordoba City Council, can be seen as part of the museum’s permanent collection, in room 45 dedicated to interwar realism, alongside the work of artists such as Pablo Picasso, Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, George Grosz and Balthus, among others.
La Chiquita Piconera represents the pinnacle of Julio Romero de Torres’s talent, a compendium of all the fundamental elements that define his painting. With an almost photographic technique in the treatment of the planes, the painter captures in the painting the intimate essence of a humble room, in which a young woman, the model María Teresa López, sits in front of a copper brazier looking directly and intensely at the viewer. A half-open door allows a glimpse of the Cordoban landscape in the background under the evening sky, in which the Guadalquivir, the Roman Bridge, the Paseo de la Ribera and the Calahorra Tower can be identified.
At the end of his life, Julio Romero de Torres returned to themes he had dealt with in his youth in order to go beyond social denunciation. This portrait brings before the viewer’s eyes all the harshness of the marginal life of its protagonist, in an image charged with melancholy and sensuality. With his peculiar language, the painter synthesises in this painting his life and artistic career, his way of understanding painting and what he wanted to express with it.
