Romero de Torres, Painter of Modernity. Dialogue with the Telefónica Collection’, in Córdoba

The exhibition, organized by the Córdoba Department of Culture in collaboration with Fundación Telefónica, was inaugurated with the attendance of the Mayor of Córdoba, José María Bellido; the Delegate of Culture, Isabel Albás; the General Director of Fundación Telefónica, Luis Prendes; and the Head of Knowledge and Digital Culture at Fundación Telefónica, Pablo Gonzalo.

With this exhibition, curated by Óscar Fernández and Laura Ramón, the aim is to offer from Córdoba a renewed vision of the painter that highlights the modern traits that positioned him as a reference artist in his time. The goal is to convey that, although Romero de Torres’ inspiration came from the local, his perspective went beyond and stood above the folklorist cliché that has always surrounded his work.

A Dialogue Between Artists

This exhibition project, which aims to review the artist’s legacy from a contemporary and transversal perspective, is conceived as a conversation between Romero de Torres and a heterogeneous selection of 20th-century artists from the Telefónica Art Collection, a dialogue that offers unprecedented readings and unexpected relationships of the artist with modernity. The juxtaposition of these works will allow us to see the relationships between them and admire how much their discourses have in common and how they convey them in a manner similar to Romero de Torres.

The exhibition consists of 13 works from the Telefónica Art Collection, a collection of more than 1,100 pieces, including painting, sculpture, photography, and works on paper by national and international artists, providing a succinct overview of some of the most prominent artistic movements of the 20th century. The exhibition features works by Helena Almeida, Marina Abramovic, John Coplans, Paul Delvaux, Albert Gleizes, Paul Graham, Juan Gris, August Herbin, Ouka Lele, Manuel Ángeles Ortiz, Sam Taylor-Johnson (formerly Taylor-Wood), Salla Tykkä, and Javier Vilató. Additionally, it includes 30 works by Julio Romero de Torres from the City Council’s collection, preserved by the museum that bears his name.

During the presentation, the General Director of Fundación Telefónica, Luis Prendes, stated that “in the year of the 150th anniversary of the birth of Julio Romero de Torres and Telefónica’s centenary, we are proud to have achieved this dream. Thanks to the Córdoba City Council, we have created, through this exhibition, a unique and exceptional dialogue between one of the most important figures in Spanish art and thirteen 20th-century works from our Art Collection, which can be seen for the first time in Córdoba.”

For his part, the Mayor of Córdoba, José María Bellido, indicated that “the figure of Julio Romero de Torres deserves to be interpreted from the present, stripped of the clichés and populist connections that have obscured his influence on early 20th-century Spanish painting and his relevance in the creation of this country.”

He also commented that the 150th anniversary of Julio Romero de Torres’ birth “should be a turning point, and this is how we have approached it from the City Council with the program launched to commemorate this anniversary and reclaim the figure of our most universal painter, stripped, I insist, of the folkloric tint to present him as an author who led the evolution of pictorial arts at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries.”

The mayor added that “Córdoba is committed to Romero de Torres, doing so without clichés, with scientific rigor, and in alliance with the most important institutions.”