Mercedes Valverde. Big words. The former director of the Municipal Museums -who came into the world in Grenade 74 years ago and was baptized in Priego de Córdoba, where her family comes from – she prides herself on being one of the most knowledgeable specialists on Julio Romero de Torres, of whom this year the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of his birth is celebrated. One goes to the interview with a notebook full of quotes about the painter taken from the books about him that he finds at home. And what happens happens.
-In a monograph by Julio Romero de Torres that I looked at this morning, the author highlights a phrase by Baudelaire to explain his art: “Lust and death are two beautiful girls.” Do you think this reflection is correct?
-I think it has nothing to do with it. Everyone writes about Romero de Torres… Well, it does have something to do with it. Look, I knew Angelita Romero de Torres, who was Julio’s little sister; I met Rafael Romero de Torres; to María, to Amalia, and to cousin Carola. Because sixteen people lived in that house at the expense of Julio, who was never in Córdoba. I have everything ready here [muestra unas notas escritas en ordenador que le entrega al periodista al finalizar la conversación]. In the Museum of Fine Arts there is a painting of an older woman with a little girl on her lap, and they say that it represents the ages of the woman: and Carola told me that they were the washerwoman and she was the little girl. July is not that. Julio is a simple man.
-A simple man who knew how to look at women very well.
-He was a great portrait painter.
-Of women especially.
-Nooo… You know what you know… He was a great portraitist. Do I tell everyone that he painted?
-Tell me.
-I have more than one hundred and fifty signed up. Shall I tell you some? The approach I had given to this interview was much more interesting. I have a script here. Look [Vuelve a mostrar los papeles]. This is what I planned to talk about at the Thyssen in Madrid, but it seems that Juan Miguel Moreno Calderón’s proposal has not gone ahead, and instead of presenting the invited work [‘La Chiquita piconera’] With a lecture of mine they are going to do a recital with Julio’s guitar, which has been in a display case for a hundred years, so imagine what the guitar is like: without strings. I spoke with Evelio Acevedo [el director de Thyssen] and he told me that same thing, about the recital. What do you want me to say.
ANNIVERSARY
«I was going to give a lecture at the Thyssen but they changed it to a guitar recital. It’s ridiculous”
-And you got angry.
-Nooo… I’m not angry. The thing is that I have seen the intellectual poverty that this city has. I gave a conference at the Thyssen in Malaga, which you can see on the internet, and there was a huge problem, because there were more than a hundred people who stayed on the street, and they started calling and made a small scandal.
-And what were you going to say at your conference in Madrid?
-What I want to tell you today. The main idea is the support of the politicians of the time for Romero de Torres.
-Because then Córdoba supported the painter.
-No Córdoba, he did not want Córdoba even blessed, like Antonio Gala. He came here to die. He did not set foot in Córdoba. He came for a week at Christmas, nothing more. If nobody knows anything, really. That’s the problem. Look: he would have been nothing without the Cordoba politicians who were triumphing in Madrid. The first one he painted was Antonio Barroso y Castillo: we are talking about the first deputy for the Liberal Party, civil governor of Madrid, minister of Public Instruction, minister of Justice… Julio was still in Córdoba, and after the success of the ‘Muse gypsy’, who gave him the first medal at the National Exhibition of 1908 for a full nude… Never had a full nude been presented in a National Painting Exhibition. That was a reaction to being fired in 1906 for ‘Vividoras del amor’.
-But the nude in painting is a very old thing, right?
-But we are talking about the National Exhibition, where themes from History continued to be painted! What if the Queen of Castile entering Granada, what if… There were only historical representations. In 1909 Julio exhibited ‘Vividoras del amor’ at the Petit Palais in Paris and it turns out that it is one of the paintings that attracts the most attention. There was the young Picasso looking at that painting, and that was the fundamental reason for him to paint ‘The Young Ladies of Avignon’ years later. Antonio Barroso y Castillo commissioned Julio to create his official portrait: Do you know what it is like for a thirty-something year old kid from Córdoba to have that commission done? Then we have Julio Burel y Cuéllar, who was from Iznájar, journalist and Minister of Public Instruction and Fine Arts. And who did he have as his right hand? To Cristóbal de Castro, Julio’s great friend: he owes him a lot. In 1916, Julio was appointed professor of Clothing at the Higher School of Sculpture, Painting and Engraving, the current San Fernando School of Fine Arts, which is next to the Madrid Casino: that is the accolade, because Sorolla was there, he was Garnelo… Do you know who he had as his favorite disciple there?
Valverde gestures during his conversation with ABC
RAFAEL CARMONA
-Whom.
-To Dalí. Dalí, who as you know lived in the Student Residence, was expelled from the School because he told one of the professors that he knew more than him, and a scandal arose. Julio wrote a letter to his father telling him that the kid had a lot of projection. When I see his portraits of Gala, my hair stands on end: I say, ‘look, there’s Julio.’
-Can I read you another sentence about the artist that I have noted from another book?
-…But let’s see what he reads to me.
-“Julio Romero de Torres makes a plastic plea against the sexual repression that consumes and grips, especially women, in the society of his time.”
-But well…, that’s obvious. Let’s see, I have read sixteen thousand documents by Julio Romero de Torres. I don’t want phrases. I am giving you very important information. I have to continue talking to you about politicians. Take advantage, this is an opportunity.
-One more, come on.
-He is already settled in Madrid, and do you know where he lived?
-No.
-It was always for rent. I have four rentals documented, on Arenal Street… He goes to live at the Longoria Palace, at the Society of Authors, because Florestán Aguilar, the King’s dentist, becomes a friend of him, and leaves him his palace in 1916, and everyone The aristocrats of Madrid visited him there, and he got involved in Madrid society, in intellectual society, he disconnected from Córdoba. By telling him that he appeared in the movie ‘La mal casada’ with Valle-Inclán. Julio was very lucky.
-Mercedes, how do you rate the events that have been planned to mark your anniversary?
-It’s ridiculous. All this is ridiculous.
-Because?
-Tell me something important, some contribution.
-Why do you like Romero de Torres so much?
-So look. My father was his notary. Thanks to my father, the effective donation of the Romero de Torres Museum was made, which was oral. My father made the deed of the donation to the town of Córdoba, with the City Council as custodian, in 1974, on the occasion of the centenary.
-You feel part of the family, then.
-When I entered the house with my father in 1964, when I was fourteen years old, that was Arcadia, it has nothing to do with what there is now. That archaeological garden of Angelita… When we went to Julio’s studio…, wrongly called that because that was never her studio, but rather that of his son Rafalito, who was one of her great copyists.
The models
-You know that there is a project to rehabilitate the house. Do you think it is good that it is visitable?
-They didn’t have much interest, to be honest. Julio left there in 1916 and never returned. It’s just that everything here is mistakes. Julio had fantastic models: Elena Pardo, Lolita Astolfi, Sara Secades… He painted Pastora Imperio, lots of them. The luck that poor little María Teresa López had [la modelo de ‘La chiquita piconera’] is that when Julio comes to die in Córdoba… Julio closes the study on November 29, 1929, his liver is already fatal. María told me: ‘My father died little yellow, little yellow, little yellow.’ He comes here, he goes to drink the waters, he does not recover; He wants to rent a house in the Sierra to breathe better, but in the end he doesn’t quite do it; and in the end he has the great commitment with Cruz Conde of the Ibero-American Exhibition of Seville, of the Casa de Córdoba, which he could not even inaugurate, poor thing as he was. He was always a brush worker, he was a born worker. He made a marathon effort.
«Julio is unclassifiable: he paints the spirit of things. His painting is enigmatic, narrative, mysterious »
-What does Córdoba owe to Romero de Torres?
-Córdoba owes you a lot. And the Andalusian woman even more so, because she gave us the signs of identity. Julio is unclassifiable. Furthermore, he was a very nice person, very tall and very handsome. Rafalito, his son, told me: ‘Merceditas: he was at a meeting, everyone was shouting, the first was Valle-Inclán, and my father was silent, but all eyes were on him.’ He was a man of humility and simplicity…
-He has cited Evelio Acevedo. When presenting the anniversary events he established a connection between our painter’s paintings and those of Hopper.
-Because they are contemporaries. At Thyssen they are going to put him where his contemporaries are. What has always been a big unknown for me is what would have happened if Julio had lived longer: he died at the age of fifty-five. I believe the future of painting was based on realism. His painting is narrative, literary, enigmatic, mysterious: he is telling you a story. I don’t know anything like it. He paints the spirit of things, and no one has done that.
