Early 20th century: roaring engines, electric lights and department stores changed the looks of the city forever. The collection of Reina Sofía Museum shows how artists depicted the new urban landscape.
The Big Apple
New York, Montevideo or Madrid. The Big Apple or Gran Vía. It doesn’t matter, during the 20th century, cities started looking more and more alike. Both Rafael Barradas, when painting Atocha Railway Station, and Torres García, when painting New York, see the same thing, what makes them universal: chaos.
In order to achieve their purpose, both artists fragment the image into numerous facets, but while Barradas’ strokes are are vibrant – he called his style vibrationism – , Torres García encloses the city in an orthogonal and rigid frame. Both of them were Uruguayan and lived in Spain, they were friends and they were in contact with avant-garde art.
Risks
The culture of the speed is born in the crazy ’20s. The youth loved sport, cinema, cars and jazz. A life of excitement that could end up in tragedy. After having an accident in Guadarrama Mountains, Alfonso Ponce de León painted this morbid self-portrait where he represents his own death. Although the topic is unsettling and daring, pure avant-garde, the style stems from avant-garde tradition.
Inside and outside
Cities were transformed inside and outside. The suburbs gave rise to industrial areas, although The Sleeping Factory by Daniel Vázquez Díaz seems to have been always there: clouds are an echo of the mountains, and mountains are an echo of roofs. In the curve of a river in a valley of the Basque Country, nature reflects the geometric volumes of the building. Experts refer to a toned-down cubism.
There were also changes in the city centres. In the avenues, shop windows were home for the first time to mannequins, which modelled the trendiest fashion. Although Surrealists and Dadaists would be fascinated by them in the ’20s, José Gutiérrez Solana is already interested in them in 1910. Mannequins came to life through his eyes.
