The gypsy dancers who... arrived from Cuba?
Another interesting piece I found at the Tetuán flea market in Madrid was an original drawing signed by M. Ariza and dated 1947. It was an artwork produced with coloured pencils on paper, depicting a couple of gypsies dancing. Among a lot of old paintings, I chose this artwork for the quality of the drawing. Surprisingly, the picture was intact, preserving all the integrity of the drawing and the intensity of its colouring, despite the very poor condition of the frame, completely broken and without protective glass.
The signature, M. Ariza, incorporating the year of creation matches that of draughtswoman, landscape and figure painter Maria Ariza y Delance (1880-1959), although this artist did not always sign her artworks in the same way.
Ariza was an appreciated Cuban artist born in Havana, one of the few female painters of the Cuban pre-Vanguard era. Her father, Antonio Ariza y Pereira, was a prominent architect in the Cuban capital, and was initially responsible for her education. In 1907 she travelled with her mother to Paris, with the aim of training as an artist at the Académie Julian, the alternative to the École des Beaux-Arts, which in those years already allowed women to enrol, although it discouraged foreign candidates from enrolling by imposing a difficult French language examination. In addition, the Académie Julian offered young women very interesting options for their apprenticeship as artists, allowing them, for example, to draw from life on the basis of male nude models. It also helped its students to take part in the official salons and to initiate an artistic career. In such circumstances, the Académie attracted countless students from Europe and the American continent.
But a year later Ariza moved to Madrid, Spain, where she completed her artistic studies under the guidance of teacher and artist Cecilio Plá, who had been teaching at the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts since 1910, replacing artist Emilio Sala in the chair of Aesthetics of colour and pictorial procedures. She also travelled around Italy and Belgium, and in 1916 she set up her own studio in Madrid, taking part in some of the national exhibitions of painting, sculpture and architecture in the Spanish capital. Her paintings are said to have been praised by Spanish artist Mariano Benlliure. One of her paintings from that period in Madrid, Inútiles Consejos (1918), inspired by Ramón de Campoamor's verses, won the prize for Figure and Composition at the National Academy of Arts and Letters in Havana (1919).
Throughout her artistic career, Ariza achieved various awards, such as the prize for the figure and composition of the National Academy of Arts and Letters of Havana (1919).
That same year she was awarded a scholarship to study in Europe for five years. During that period Ariza took part in many of the group exhibitions at the Salón de Bellas Artes in Havana. She remained in Europe until 1926. At the end of that year she returned to Cuba.
Her arrival to Havana coincides with a time of reorganization and expansion of the teaching plan at the Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes San Alejandro, the second oldest artistic institution in Latin America (in Mexico City there was already the Real Academia de San Carlos de las Nobles Artes). Founded on January 11, 1818, San Alejandro had operated in its first decades as a section of the Real Academia de Nobles Artes de San Fernando, in Madrid (Royal Order of January 26, 1833). Ariza became a teacher at the San Alejandro National Academy of Fine Arts, obtaining the chair of History of Art in 1927, and in 1931 she became the Secretary of the Academy, under the direction of painter Armando G. Menocal. In 1940 Ariza took part in the exhibition "Three Hundred Years of Art in Cuba". In 1944 she exhibited her artwork at the first Salón Juan Bautista Vermay, and in 1949, at the exhibition La Mujer en la Plástica (Women in the Visual Arts), at the Liceo de La Habana.
In addition to her work as an artist, Ariza delivered numerous lectures (Lyceum Society, University of Havana, etc.), and contributed to various newspapers and magazines of her time. María Ariza died in Havana on 7 September 1959. In 2022, Ariza's work was part of a major exhibition, El Pasado Mío (My Own Past): Afro-descendant Contributions to Cuban Art, at the Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African and African American Art, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. Nowadays, there are many academic voices calling for greater recognition of artist María Ariza y Delance, and for more research into her artistic work. Discoveries of forgotten artworks, such as this piece, will undoubtedly contribute to that.
There is one detail in our drawing that should be pointed out, and that is the type of paper used by the artist, a special high-end paper. Using a light box, the manufacturer's watermark, J. Vilaseca S.A., can be clearly appreciated.
It is an extremely interesting fact, as since the end of the 19th century the José Vilaseca y Doménech company had begun a technological and commercial expansion, which would lead the paper manufacturer to have its own warehouses in Mexico and Cuba. At the time the artist produced this drawing, the name of the company was already the current one, J. Vilaseca S.A. With regard to the depicted figures, there is no doubt that the clothes do not correspond to the attire of Spanish flamenco dancers. All this contributes to the idea that she is a foreign author. The drawing may have travelled to Spain folded. Actually, although it is now flattened, the folds were still visible at the time it was acquired.
On researching, I also discovered that this original drawing by M. Ariza was reproduced as a poster in a 35 x 50 cm format by Gráficas Reunidas S.A. (Calle del Barquillo, 8, Madrid), probably not long after the year of its creation. Interestingly, the person who made the final artwork for the reproduction signed the print as "Hijosa". Certainly, an intriguing case of plagiarism. Although Spain had had an intellectual property law in place since 1879, 1947 was a very difficult time, and respect for copyright was by no means guaranteed, especially if the copied artwork came from abroad. It is still possible to find some copies of that print on the collectors' market today.
Sources:
- Vázquez Rodríguez, Benigno, La pintura y la escultura en Cuba. Editorial LEX, Havana, Cuba, 1952 (María Ariza Delance, pp. 137-138 and 140).
- Álvarez del Real, María Eloísa, 12.000 Minibiografías. Editorial América, S.A., Panamá, 1991, p. 47.
- Exhibition catalogue for One hundred years of Cuban landscape, 1850 to 1950, Cernuda Arte, Coral Gables, FL, December 2001-February 2002 (Painting by María Ariza, page 32).
- Ramírez Abreu, María Virginia, El discurso femenino en la vanguardia plástica cubana. Doctoral thesis. University of Santiago de Compostela (USC), 2011 (María Ariza Delance, chapter I, p. 71).
- Duany, Jorge, Picturing Cuba: Art, Culture, and Identity on the Island and in the Diaspora. University Press of Florida, 2019.
- Maria Ariza Delange's file. San Alejandro Archives.
Two years later, in the same flea market, I found a charcoal and conté pencil drawing on paper entitled Another Victory. It was signed by D. Concha, although stating that it was a copy, made for the drawing's author's mother.
Another Victory (Late l9th c.), charcoal and conté pencil on paper.
The image was based on an oil painting of the same title by Spanish artist Martínez del Rincón, in the Prado Museum Collection. Serafín Martínez del Rincón y Trives (1840-1892) was an award-winning painter from Palencia who attended the San Fernando School of Fine Arts in Madrid. Other artworks by this artist in the Museum's collections include: The Female Artist (ca. 1887), A Harem Slave (ca. 1888), Alone (1884), The Lazy Woman (ca. 1887), Poor Witch! (1884), The Soup Delivery in a Capuchin Convent (1866), and A Maja (ca. 1890).
Another Victory (ca. 1886), oil painting by S. Martínez del Rincón. Prado Museum.
The drawing is actually a copy of a woodcut by Berlin art publisher Richard Bong. Measuring about 40.5 x 28 cm, including margins, was published in a German art magazine at the end of the 19th century.
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