Hernando Viñes Soto

HERNANDO VIÑES SOTO (Paris, 1904 - 1993).
Untitled, 1932.
Oil on canvas.
Signed and dated in the lower left corner.
Measurements: 73 x 92 cm; 97 x 116 cm (frame).
During the year 1932 Viñes spent a season in Palma de Mallorca, a stay that influenced the choice of themes, being a subject of inspiration. In this work the artist presents an image of clear Mediterranean inspiration, both in the forms and in the tonalities he uses. The artist shows us two women protagonists, each located at one end of the composition. One of them, facing the viewer, and the other with her back to the viewer, although she turns her face. Behind her, the wide space of sea, gives way to a group of houses, which are closed by mountains where the blue and violet tones blend together creating a dreamy atmosphere.
Born into an upper-class bourgeois family, Hernando Viñes Soto was introduced into the Parisian artistic circle by his uncle, the pianist and composer Ricardo Viñes. During the First World War he settled in Madrid, returning to Paris in 1918. There Pablo Picasso, a friend of his uncle, after seeing his first drawings, advised him to continue along the same path and to perfect his knowledge as a self-taught artist. Viñes followed Picasso's advice, first entering the Academy of Sacred Art in Paris, where he was a disciple of Maurice Denis and Georges Desvallieres and then, in 1922, completing his training with André Lothe and Gino Severini. The following year he participated as a decorator in "El retablo de Maese Pedro", by Manuel de Falla, and exhibited for the first time at the Salon d'Automne. That same year, 1923, he came into contact, through his friend Manuel Ángeles Ortiz, with the circle of young Spanish artists living in Paris: Francisco Bores, Luis Buñuel, Joaquín Peinado, Francisco García Lorca, Pancho Cossío, Rafael Alberti, Ismael de la Serna, etc. At the age of twenty he decided to devote himself fully to painting, and immediately obtained the support of two important critics, Tériade and Zervos, the latter being the director of "Cahiers d'Art". From then on he exhibited regularly at the Percier and Max Berger galleries in Paris. After the Second World War, a very hard period began for the painter, in which, in spite of numerous collective and individual exhibitions, he did not achieve the notoriety that his brilliant beginnings promised. He had to wait until 1965 and the great retrospective that the Museum of Modern Art of Madrid dedicated to him to finally be recognized as one of the most brilliant painters of his generation. From that moment on, the exhibitions followed one after the other, in outstanding galleries all over Spain, such as Théo (Madrid and Valencia), Dalmau (Barcelona) or Ruiz (Santander). At the beginning of the eighties important retrospective exhibitions were dedicated to him at the Casa de España in Paris, the Museum of Fine Arts in Santander and the Bonnat Museum in Bayonne. In 1988 he received the Gold Medal of Arts and Letters from the hand of King Juan Carlos I. At the same time, his international fame grew as a result of exhibitions held in Germany, Denmark, the United States, Czechoslovakia, England and Japan. Far from schools and any hint of boastfulness, Viñes' work continued its path in France, and museums around the world began to acquire his works. He is currently represented in the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid, the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris, the Museums of Albi, Castres and Saint-Ouen in France, the Fine Arts Museums of Tel-Aviv, Buenos Aires and Prague, the Patio Herreriano Contemporary Art Museum in Valladolid and the ARTIUM in Vitoria, among many others.