DOI issue:
Studio-Talk
DOI Page / Citation link: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.43451#0273
Studio-Talk
He lives isolated, aloof even from contemporary
artistic movements. A Castilian, deeply attached
to his country, he has transcribed that attachment
in some magnificent pictures depicting the customs
of Castile; poet, he gives free rein to his poesy in
certain fine decorative works; and lastly, as a painter
in the true sense of the word, as a lover of colour,
he delights also in studies of light, impressions of
movement and in various “effects.”
Chicharro does not paint the peasants of Castile
because they are picturesque, but because he finds
himself in the closest affinity with them, because
their past is his own and because the soil over
which they bow themselves and from which they
draw their sustenance, this parched earth which we
see in the background of his pictures, is the soil
of his own fatherland, scorched by his own sun.
All these Castilian works of Chicharro are intimately
realistic; but there is, so to say, an immediate
realism, and there is a second realism infinitely
more lofty than the first, which represents not only
what is seen but what is felt.
After the contemplation of these arid plateaux,
these immense horizons in which there is nothing
to distract or rest the eye,
Chicharro dreams of
another nature where the
vegetation is luxurious and
abundant, where nothing
offends or wearies the eye,
where all the forms are
beautiful not only with a
beauty of character but
also with a beauty of har¬
mony, for he is Latin in
temperament despite all
the appeal of atticism.
From this aspiration to
escape at times from the
all-compelling love of his
own land come no doubt
certain landscapes in his
decorative panels, such as
L' Inspiration, with delicate
tones and numerous con-
tours to arrest the eye.
These stand as the anti-
thesis of his Castilian
pictures in which he is
preoccupied with the verity
of his transcriptions of
nature, and his decorative
panels become thus symbolical works in which
even the central idea is a figment of the artist’s
brain. Here we find him introducing figures, for
he finds them the most apt to reproduce his
thought; but these forms are not there for them-
selves alone—despite their corporeal appearance
they do not exist as human beings, but are present
as manifestations of passions, of eternal ideas of
humanity. Chicharro makes use of no special
mythology but employs the symbolism slowly
created by mankind, symbols of everlasting import
which he feels in himself and which are concordant
with his artistic emotions, and which he re-creates
in himself in the image of his own personality.
Chicharro does not boast of his philosophy, and if
his decorative works are so profoundly philosophical
it is because they are the purest and truest ex-
pression of his artistic sensibilities and thought.
Hence their simplicity of line, hence that emotional
quality which we find in still greater degree in the
sketches which are the first essays towards their
creation. All these panels, even to the mournful
mediaeval triptych Les Trois Epouses, are of the genre
of “ inward ” picturing, of “ thoughtful ” painting.
Chicharro has been described as a “colourist,”
“ LE BOSSU DE BURGONDE”
BY EDUARDO CHICHARRO
259
He lives isolated, aloof even from contemporary
artistic movements. A Castilian, deeply attached
to his country, he has transcribed that attachment
in some magnificent pictures depicting the customs
of Castile; poet, he gives free rein to his poesy in
certain fine decorative works; and lastly, as a painter
in the true sense of the word, as a lover of colour,
he delights also in studies of light, impressions of
movement and in various “effects.”
Chicharro does not paint the peasants of Castile
because they are picturesque, but because he finds
himself in the closest affinity with them, because
their past is his own and because the soil over
which they bow themselves and from which they
draw their sustenance, this parched earth which we
see in the background of his pictures, is the soil
of his own fatherland, scorched by his own sun.
All these Castilian works of Chicharro are intimately
realistic; but there is, so to say, an immediate
realism, and there is a second realism infinitely
more lofty than the first, which represents not only
what is seen but what is felt.
After the contemplation of these arid plateaux,
these immense horizons in which there is nothing
to distract or rest the eye,
Chicharro dreams of
another nature where the
vegetation is luxurious and
abundant, where nothing
offends or wearies the eye,
where all the forms are
beautiful not only with a
beauty of character but
also with a beauty of har¬
mony, for he is Latin in
temperament despite all
the appeal of atticism.
From this aspiration to
escape at times from the
all-compelling love of his
own land come no doubt
certain landscapes in his
decorative panels, such as
L' Inspiration, with delicate
tones and numerous con-
tours to arrest the eye.
These stand as the anti-
thesis of his Castilian
pictures in which he is
preoccupied with the verity
of his transcriptions of
nature, and his decorative
panels become thus symbolical works in which
even the central idea is a figment of the artist’s
brain. Here we find him introducing figures, for
he finds them the most apt to reproduce his
thought; but these forms are not there for them-
selves alone—despite their corporeal appearance
they do not exist as human beings, but are present
as manifestations of passions, of eternal ideas of
humanity. Chicharro makes use of no special
mythology but employs the symbolism slowly
created by mankind, symbols of everlasting import
which he feels in himself and which are concordant
with his artistic emotions, and which he re-creates
in himself in the image of his own personality.
Chicharro does not boast of his philosophy, and if
his decorative works are so profoundly philosophical
it is because they are the purest and truest ex-
pression of his artistic sensibilities and thought.
Hence their simplicity of line, hence that emotional
quality which we find in still greater degree in the
sketches which are the first essays towards their
creation. All these panels, even to the mournful
mediaeval triptych Les Trois Epouses, are of the genre
of “ inward ” picturing, of “ thoughtful ” painting.
Chicharro has been described as a “colourist,”
“ LE BOSSU DE BURGONDE”
BY EDUARDO CHICHARRO
259