International studio (23.1904)

Studio- Talk

and the world in general. By the word “school”
I mean that there is in these cities as nowhere
else in Spain—not even in Madrid—a decided
movement in favour of art and artists, whose
numbers increase yearly, and who are capable of
producing a vigorous and healthy art of their own,
independent of external influences.

The reputation of two artists, who till quite
lately have been the scorn of biassed critics, is
evidently increasing. These are, Sorolla in painting,
and Blay in sculpture. It is but two or three
years since the former was denied by many to be
a serious painter, and the latter, in the shadow of
Querol and Benlliure, was accounted a nobody.
To-day Sorolla is the recognised lord and master
of the gallery. The tiny room where his nine
works are hung is the centre of all attraction, the
lingering place for all who feel art and under-
stand that they are in the presence of a great
master. Blay too, once ignored by the public,
has at last won for himself a merited place in the
first rank of Spanish sculptors. His art is charac-

terised by a vivid, flashing, creative imagination,
severe and elegant, powerful and delicate.

, Among other artists who are either rising or have
already attained their mature personality, Eduardo
Chicharro, a young Madrid painter living in Rome,
deserves special mention for the great progress he
has made. This year’s picture, a large triptych re-
presenting Tasso’s “Poem of Amidaand Reinoldo,”
shows the influence of the pre-Raphaelite school
of English painters.
Another fine triptych is Enrique Cubell’s Work,
.Rest, and Family. D. Ramon Casas sent an
immense canvas, styled Barcelona, ipo2, showing
the mounted gendarmerie trying to drive back
a huge crowd of workmen and unemployed;
and the young Valencian, Manuel Benedito, re-
presents a scene from Dante’s “ Inferno,” an
immense pot-pourri of human forms in every
imaginable posture—men and women writhing
and fighting, howling and tumbling about in dire
confusion.


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POTTERY CLASS, ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO
(See Chicago Studio- Talk)