Impressions of Valencia and Godera

They pledged that a film “Citizen Kane” (1941), considered today as one of the best films in history, be destroyed for the benefit of the film, by a prestigious critic. Later, another person had the same idea for Psycho (1960). Well, what works for the seventh art also works for the third art (painting). In 1874, the French journalist, painter, and sculptor Louis Leroy (1812–1885) participated in an exhibition of young artists.

Seeing Claude Monet’s (1840-1926) painting “Impression, The Rising Sun” (“Impression: The Sun Rises”), Leroy erupted: “I told myself, since leave me If you have a deep impression, you must have some impressions of it. (…) A wallpaper is more delicate than this sea view”. From this melee emerged a trend and a definition: Impressionism. Not everything is concentrated in France: one of the book’s most famous authors is from Valencia: Ignacio Pinazo (1849-1916).

loose strokes

For the architect, art historian, and poet José Pijoán (1879-1963), “Impressionism is a pictorial technique consisting of the use of juxtaposed brushstrokes of pure tones, forming textures of color, and Black is reduced to a minimum,” or even suppressed across the board. If anything, loose brushstrokes abound. Those who practice Impressionism are not trying to faithfully depict reality, but atmosphere.

It was the idea of ​​a group of young artists who met at the now-defunct Café Guerbois on the Boulevard de Clichy (Moulin Rouge area): like Monet himself and Edgar Degas (1834-1917) painters, Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) or Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919). This is true even of writers like the naturalist Émile Zola (1840-1902). So, how did Ignacio Pinazzo Camalenci come to be Impressionism?

Pinazzo’s childhood and youth were humble

a bunch of occupations

Pinazzo’s childhood and youth were so humble that he was forced to work in the most diverse trades to survive (silversmith, hatmaker). Indeed, some, such as decorators or painters of fans and tiles, have not ceased to have a definite relationship with their creative trades.

In 1863, when he successfully enrolled at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Carlos, founded in 1768, he was already working as a milliner. At that time, he started working as a hatmaker under the tutelage of the painter Emilio, who was born in Alcoy, among others. Francis Hall (1850-1910) and José Fernández Olmos of Valencia (1836-1903). Judging from the works of the two, it can be confirmed through the comparison of paintings that he was influenced a lot.

In Rome, artists exposed to fashionable painting trends

trip to rome

The medal awarded by the Real Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País de Valencia (Real Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País de Valencia) (1776) in 1871, or the fact that in 1873 the City Council of Barcelona received his painting “La Caridad”, encouraged him to work in painting set more ambitious goals and underwent better training. So he went to Rome to study the classics. But his money ran out: he returned in 1876 and took part in a competition organized by the Valencian Parliament.

Winning means receiving a pension and continuing to study in the Italian capital. He received the award for his work “Francisco I Going Ashore on the Beach of Valencia”. If you want to be moral, he revalidates by painting Daughters of El Cid, Abdication of King Jaime the Conqueror, in Rome. There, of course, between the classics and the classics, he found a triumphant artistic current: Impressionism, with its own characteristic atmospheric informalism.

a cholera epidemic caused him to relocate

technical difference

However, his art acquired its specificity in the face of the normalized Impressionism of Paris. He does use black a lot, in fact his palette radiates quite a bit of dark tones mixed with browns and earth tones. He also resorted more to classical subjects, which, yes, passed the Impressionist sieve. It contains more interiors than in the original stream.

The Gelbevois café group “fell in love” with the painting “au plein Air” in the open air (the so-called plenaryism), but Pinazzo did not disdain anything: everything seemed to want to capture him with his brush. Although he always adopted an Impressionist approach, with looser and looser lines, he gradually put aside the “big subject” and concentrated on the reality around him, especially after going to Godera (l’Horta Nord).

scourge of cholera

The cholera epidemics that frequently hit the Valencian capital (1834, 1855, 1865 and 1885, the worst of which, followed by milder outbreaks in 1860 and 1890) were about to become a date. In 1884 it officially penetrated through Novelda (Medio Vinalopó) into Levante, and the outbreak probably didn’t take long to reach the “cap i casal”, as it happened, so Pinazzo was in Marched with the family to Villa Maria that year.

The estate actually belonged to José Jaumandreu Sitges, a Catalan patron living in Valencia, whose biography erases his subsequent financial bankruptcy. It unknowingly provided the final resting place for the Valencian painter, as Pinazzo stayed in Godella (where the Pinazzo House-Museum is located), becoming increasingly closed to his art . Acute bronchitis claimed his life on 18 October, leaving behind an impressive artistic, if not human, legacy.