Don Ramón del Valle Inclán

Alberto Gironella once described his vocation as “more than painter, writer, torero, or anything else, that of a provoker.” In that spirit, it is hardly surprising that he chose to pay homage to the ever-provocative and groundbreaking playwright Ramón del Valle-Inclán (1866-1936), a member of the Spanish Generación del ’98 , a group of literary figures who pursued modern culture and aesthetics. Valle-Inclán’s character and political and social critiques provided a perfect medium for Gironella’s dramatic modernism. His portrait is fragmented, almost Cubist in style with fragments of color variously illuminated and combining in a jagged composition dominated by Valle-Inclán’s beard. By embracing modernist takes on subject, form, and light, Gironella achieved an enduring image of a man who fittingly committed his oeuvre to new cultural and aesthetic ideas.

Text credit: Produced in collaboration with the University of Maryland Department of Art History & Archaeology and by Thomas Peters