Angeles Santos

ANGELES SANTOS TORROELLA (Portbou, 1911 - Madrid, 2013).
"Lady at the window in Huesca", 1936-1937.
Oil on canvas.
Presents inscription on the back.
Signed in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 70 x 58 cm.
In the year 1935, Ángeles Santos met her future husband the painter Emilio Grau, it was from then on when she clarified her palette leaving behind the dark and grayish tones. This work is located at that time of transition, in fact, you can see that the background still maintains the cold tones, while the protagonist lady is portrayed with warmer tones. In addition, it is worth mentioning that, during this period, the author also lengthened the canon of the figures, thus presenting more stylized and elegant forms as can be glimpsed in the conception of the figure of the young woman. The image is shown to the viewer in an apparently unfinished way, revealing the sketch lines in the lower part of the arms and the waist, while the face shows great detail and careful modeling based on delicate shadows and brushstrokes that structure the volume of the facial features, showing the artistic quality of Angeles Santos.
The work of Angeles Santos Torroella can be divided into three stages that correspond to the three cities where she lived, Valladolid, Madrid and Barcelona. In this case this work corresponds to the last stage initiated in Barcelona. In which the artist, starting in 1969, began in the genre of landscapes, painting the cities of Paris, Barcelona, Cadaqués and Sitges through an aesthetic influenced by her reconciliation with the painter Emilio Grau.
Sister of the poet and art critic Rafael Santos Torroella, she began drawing and painting at the age of fourteen during her school years at the Esclavas Concepcionistas boarding school in Seville. Two years later he moved with his parents to Valladolid, where he was taught by the Italian painter Cellino Perotti and painted, at the age of 18, "Un mundo", a large format oil painting representing a strange surrealist planet, currently kept in the collection of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía.After a couple of exhibitions in Valladolid, his participation in the IX Salón de Otoño in Madrid in 1929, increased his fame, resulting in the publication of articles that gave reason for his painting (half expressionist, half surrealist) by intellectuals and critics such as Jorge Guillén, Ramón Gómez de la Serna, Manuel Abril, Juan Ramón Jiménez, Federico García Lorca, Guillermo Díaz-Plaja, Joan Teixidor, among others. In 1931 she had a solo exhibition in Paris and, in 1932, she participated in the collective of Iberian Artists in San Sebastian, Copenhagen and the French capital. The following year she was invited to exhibit in the group show at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh (USA) and in 1936 she was part of the Spanish pavilion at the Venice Biennale.