Exposición temporal ‘Julio Romero de Torres. Entre el mito y la tradición’. Museo Carmen Thyssen Málaga. Del 27 de abril al 8 de septiembre de 2013

‘Julio Romero de Torres. Between Myth and Tradition’ surveys the work of one of the most
popular painters in Spanish historiography and reflects on his career through different sections
dealing with the most frequently recurring themes in his output.

Julio Romero de Torres (Cordoba, 1874–1930) is one of the most renowned Spanish artists
of what was known as the ‘fin-de-siècle’ period and has come to be regarded as the absolute
master of Andalusian symbolism. His oeuvre has long been associated with popular and folk
trends in Spanish painting, but it has an identity of its own and has gone from being considered
merely commonplace to being hailed as an aesthetic trend of symbolism.

The exhibition is organised into several thematic sections which also trace the painter’s
stylistic development. Linked from childhood to the Cordoba museum of paintings – where
his father was curator, as well as a painter – Julio Romero de Torres spent his formative
period under the influence of his father’s teaching, the Cordoba museum and the classrooms
of the School of Fine Arts and Music Conservatory. During what is considered to be the first
stage in his career, he cultivated a luminarist style of painting linked to an aesthetic rooted in
impressionism. However, it was following a trip to Italy in 1908 that his career experienced
an about-turn and his distinctive painting style took shape. From this point onwards his
compositions are characterised by their heavily symbolic connotations and by the constant
presence of the concept of duality to represent the symbiotic relationship between two moral
extremes.