Author: Xavi

The CAEM researcher, Jésica Martí, teaches a course at the Professional Association of Historians of Art (APROHA)

The CAEM collaborates with APROHA, assisting in a specific training in issues of authentication of works of art.

course

It is a course in which works of art are approached from an organoleptic perspective crossed with the latest technology of scientific analysis. A course to learn how to interpret non-invasive diagnostic techniques in which the Center d’Art d’Època Moderna (CAEM) is specialized, which operates in the Science Park of the University of Lleida; especially multiband analysis, using ultraviolet, infrared and X-ray spectrum techniques.

The course lasts 12 hours, will be held on June 6th, 7th and 8th, from 4:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., and will serve to introduce art historians to the profile and activity of the qualified expert in analysis and assessment of works of art (the speciality of the CAEM). A work for which it is currently considered fundamental to carry out an approximation and argumentation at the material level, in addition to the traditional (and still fundamental) work of the art historian, in which a purely aesthetic study and assessment of the work is carried out.

More information, here

The director of the CAEM, Ximo Company, gives a conference at the Chapel of Sant Isidre Llaurador, near the village of Ponts

This culminates the work of study, restoration and enhancement of the chapel and the movable property inside, which has been carried out by the CAEM.

chapel Ponts

In the municipality of Ponts, you can find a beautiful complex owned by the Comunitat de Regants del Canal d’Urgell, which houses a small chapel dedicated to Sant Isidre Llaurador. A slim construction designed by a great disciple of Antoni Gaudí: Isidre Puig i Boada (Barcelona 1891-1987).

The management of the Comunitat de Regants wanted to study, preserve and value this little piece of heritage that they keep. And the CAEM has been key to this work. We have studied the chapel, in addition to various movable property that it keeps inside: a tabernacle from the end of the 19th century or the beginning of the 20th century, an oil painting of a crucified Christ from the 19th century, a sculpture of Sant Isidre Llaurador from the school of Olot, and some beautiful period lamps. Some of the assets, in addition to being studied, have been restored under the supervision of the Center, restoring them and thus helping their conservation.

Also, the CAEM has coordinated the musealization of the space for its enhancement, devising and placing various exhibition panels, in addition to the placement of a protective screen for the crucifixion, which can be seen in the same niche in which it was found previously, but now minimizing the risks of deterioration, and the new lighting that helps to appreciate the work in all its splendour.

In short, it is an integral work, which has been culminated with a conference on the day of the inauguration of the chapel as a musealized space: the day of Sant Isidre Llaurador (last May 14th), during the congregation party that the Comunitat de Regants celebrates that day.

The CAEM writes a book on the first drawings of Picasso in his period in La Coruña (1891-1895)

The book has been carried out by Professor Ximo Company and has had the collaboration of various researchers and scientific advisers from the CAEM, especially Miriam Carmona.

The text can be consulted in open access in the Repositori Digital de la Universitat de Lleida (UdL), which collects, manages, disseminates and preserves the publications in digital format derived from the academic and research activity of the members of the college community of the UdL. Specifically, this text is part of the research activity of the Grup d’Investigació Consolidat de la Generalitat de Catalunya “Art i Cultura d’Època Moderna”.

A new interpretive turn of the first drawings of Picasso is proposed. Of course, in all of them the adolescent Pablo Ruiz Picasso exhibits and submits to the ordinary, mandatory and traditional learning method of drawing classes taught in turn-of-the-century art schools throughout Spain, as the one in La Coruña undoubtedly was, but, at the same time, in some of these drawings we observe how the young Picasso, perhaps due to the influence of his teacher Isidoro Brocos, already fits, defines, traps and geometrizes some volumes (of animals, people, landscapes or architectures) with a very personal and differentiated compositional mode; in all of them he instills an undeniable proto-cubist stamp.

In addition, this text studies some drawings of anonymous authorship that can be related to the creative spirit of this first stage of Pablo Ruiz Picasso.

 

Click here to see full publication

Dr. Helmut C. Jacobs, Emeritus Professor of Romance Literature at the University of Duisburg-Essen (Germany), widely specialized in the polyhedral figure of Goya, joins the CAEM group of scientific advisers

The incorporation of Prof. Jacobs to the CAEM greatly enriches the plural and holistic view practiced in numerous investigations developed in our analytical office.

Helmut C. Jacobs

 

Prof. Helmut C. Jacobs is not only interested in the philological aspect of “Los Caprichos”, but also in what he calls with semantic precision “the intermediality” between image, text and sound, that is, the union of the various media that concur and interact in each work.

In fact, in his splendid book El sueño de la razón. El Capricho 43 de Goya en el arte visual, la literatura y la música. Frankfurt y Madrid, 2011, Jacobs analyses an entire era in the Spanish history and culture. Jacob warns us of the clear influence of the Age of Enlightenment in the work of the Aragonese painter, which conditioned his creation processes and the various themes that Goya dealt with and analysed of his country and his society.

CAEM team discovers a previously unpublished drawing by Francisco de Goya

It is an exquisite pencil portrait on paper of Juana Galarza de Goicoechea, a wealthy merchant who was part of the painter’s in-laws.

Galarza_detail

The fixed clear gaze and the hint of a smile on her lips make her face friendly. This is how Francisco de Goya immortalised Juana Galarza de Goicoechea in a fine pencil portrait: a wealthy merchant who was part of the painter’s family-in-law (his son, Javier de Goya, married Gumersinda de Goicoechea, the second daughter of the portrayed).

It is an exquisite miniature in pencil on paper, depicting the profile of a mature woman, with a lost but serene gaze, dressed in the fashion of the first decade of the 19th century and with her hair tied up in a high, regency-style up-do. After an in-depth, long, meditated and contrasted study, which has lasted just over three years, Doctor Ximo Company and the researcher Jésica Martí, from the Centre of Art of the Modern Period in Lleida, have linked the woman to Juana Galarza, and have attributed the piece to Francisco de Goya.

This opinion has been contrasted with different experts on the subject and they have all agreed on the great quality of the piece: it is a small miniature drawing made in a very resolute and dynamic way, with a fine and exquisite result. It is beautiful, elegant and exudes an air of freedom. The portrait could only have been drawn by someone very close to the Goicoechea family, and, moreover, it had to be someone with great talent, an intuitive and trained hand, which is evident in the ease with which each of the strokes has been drawn: above all, the wild tuft of hair screams out that it has been done by the hand of the Aragonese master, Francisco de Goya.

The work has an inscription on the lower right-hand side, a type of annotation quite common among 19th-century collectors who tried to bring order to their art collections by writing the name of the artist to whom they suspected the piece belonged: in this case Goya.

The research process has been long, as it has been approached from many different points of view so as not to leave any loose ends, and it has been worth it: the paper corresponds to the first decade of the 19th century; the woman depicted is from Goya’s direct environment; the type of piece – a pencil portrait – is part of Goya’s production; and it would even fit in perfectly with the evolution of portraiture in Goya, and within the modes of representation used for his family in particular. Each question has been answered and no stone has been left unturned. But, moreover, the lines are not only Goya’s: they are Goya’s own. The work belongs to a private collection.

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