Textos sobre la artista

There are several striking things about María Villalonga Cabeza de Vaca’s paintings. One of them is that they are predominantly portraits, at a time when the portrait painter is an unfamiliar thing. Although recent landmark exhibitions, such as The Triumph of Painting (2005) and The Painting of Modern Life (2007) have defended the persistence of figurative painting throughout the twentieth century, and have justifiably argued for its undeniable resurgence since the 1960s, traditional portraiture is now an anomaly. More often than not, the subject, or ‘sitter’, appears as a function of his or her social context, the latter usually the demi monde, leading curators to speak of social commentary. Such arguments have been made for the ‘bad’ painting which has proliferated in the past two or three decades,1 as well as in photorealist works. Like the painters from both of these camps, Villalonga also works from photographs, but this is where the similarity ends. Although her portraits are clearly contemporary – this is immediately evident in the appearance of her subjects, and is reinforced by the omnipresent sunlight evocative of David Hockney, another painter of contemporary life whom Villalonga admires – her approach to her subject is inflected by other traditions. This is in spite of the fact that she points only with difficulty to other artists who influenced her. Having come to painting at the age of 35, albeit from a family of painters (her grandmother painted, and her brother paints professionally, and her sister and mother are watercolourists), she studied for only a short time at a private studio. After briefly drawing from casts, she moved directly into oils, largely because her tutor saw in her a clear style, based on her love of, and facility with colour.2 Acknowledging her formal debt to the luminous colours and subtle yet intense brushwork of Hermenegildo Anglada- Camarasa, the fin de siècle Catalan painter who had an important, if undervalued impact on Kandinsky, she is, however, hard pressed to identify other sources for her approach to painting. Nonetheless, the referral in some of her work to historical sources, even to iconography, is clear. Discernible in a range of references, from the brushwork and the sumptuous colours of Velázquez in the velvet curtain flanking an aristocrat, to a raking path of light, reminiscent of one of Titian’s annunciations in a portrait of a dreamy, adolescent girl, this canonical language of art is still readable in these twenty-first century canvases. But there is a difference in its function, which highlights one of the most striking aspects of her work. If in the past these motifs either affirmed social status or identified religious characters, in Villalonga’s work they tell you about the subject as a subject, as a person, and not as a type. These paintings are about other people, with colour, light, and iconographical references all working together to create the subject’s unique presence. The value she places on the subjective identity of her subject is clear in the way she works. She is reluctant to paint people she doesn’t know, and uses light to emphasise the character of the subject. Although colour is the most salient feature of her work – the surface of her paintings are subtly, yet richly textured, making their material presence unavoidable – it is really a vehicle for light, which for Villalonga is the element that brings together the material of the painting and the essence of her subject. When asked what she admires in the works of other artists, it is luminosity, and its implicit spirituality, that she regards.3 Rothko’s carefully layered canvases, painted on a white ground so as to reflect the light back through the layers, lighting the works from within, and Bill Viola’s spiritual, if not religious rendering of light and water, are of interest to her. Consequently, although she paints primarily in Spain, the blinding Mediterranean light that pervades her portraits, usually from above, is not just a function of realism. Although it is a clear indicator of place, picking out the lush foliage, dancing across the surface of swimming pools, and falling across the billows of wind-swept, light summer clothing, it is also an emphatic light. It leaves no doubt that the subject is indeed the reason for the painting. This generosity toward the subject is arguably the most appealing aspect of Villalonga’s work.

Nancy Jachec

Londres 2009

(Nancy Jachec es una erudita independiente que ha publicado numerosos artículos sobre el Arte y las relaciones internacionales durante la Guerra Fría en los últimos 30 años. En 2011 ha publicado una monografía sobre Jackson Pollock y en el actualmente trabaja en su cuarto libro: The Société Européenne de Culture 1946-1968: Dialogues with the East, the West and the World. Nancy Jachec vive y trabaja en Londres.)