5 most important works of MARUJA MALLO

Maruja Mallo, nickname of Ana María Gómez González (1902-1995), she is one of the most unclassifiable painters of the vanguards of the beginning of the 20th century. A Galician painter who garnered the friendship and admiration of figures such as Ortega y Gasset, Picasso, André Breton, García Lorca, Buñuel, Ramón Gómez de la Serna or Rafael Alberti, among others. Her work is influenced by the surreal, although her style is very personal and she also participated in folklorism racist of the Mexican muralists like Diego Rivera or of the oneirism of Ernst or Dalí.

A complex, unique and universal style that we show you in this lesson at unPROFESOR.com through the most important works of Maruja Mallo.

Index

1. Characteristics of the style and works of Maruja Mallo
2. Surrealist nude, 1927, one of Maruja Mallo's most important works
3. The vervain, 1927
4. Earth and excrement, 1932
5. The Wheat Surprise, 1936

Before talking about the works of Maruja Mallo, we are going to talk about her style. She was a Spanish painter classified as surreal, being an artist well ahead of her time by breaking with all conventions and creating a unique and recognizable style for her groundbreaking and innovative character. Maruja was part of the Generation of 27 and she always tried to capture her feelings and emotions in her works, capturing expressive images full of special magic.

Throughout her prolific pictorial career, Maruja Mallo went through several periods. In her early years, she opted for color, giving free rein to her creativity by combining bright colors and thus creating works full of vitality.

In her dark period, from 1945 to 1957, Maruja Mallo's palette was filled with greys, browns and blacks. Another of her constants was the influence of ancient Egyptian painting and its symmetry and the use of geometric figures. A geometry that she used to create rotund and strong female figures, empowered and firm.

Between the most representative works of the style and artistic production of Maruja Mallo stands out surreal nude.

clearly influenced by the surrealist and metaphysical aesthetics of Chirico or Carrá, Maruja Mallo shows us a nude of a female body through a mannequin, an iconic object of that current. However, Maruja does not participate in the psychic automatism and creates a more serene, less disturbing scene, superimposing different planes to generate the sensation of movement.

This is one of the works of Maruja Mallo best known and it is an oil painting of 119x165 centimeters and is currently exhibited in the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid.

It is a picture of her most optimistic time, a roaring 20's celebration. Maruja shows us what the Madrid society of those years, although it also reveals some criticism. Thus, the artist includes a series of characters mixed up in apparent chaos, recreating a scene clearly reminiscent of surrealism.

This painting is part of a series of four oil paintings dedicated to the festivities of Madrid and that he exhibited in 1928 in the rooms of the Revista de Occidente, under the auspices of Ortega y Gasset. In it, he introduces from the typical elements of popular Madrid festivals to strange characters such as a friar, a one-eyed giant or a musician with enormous feet.

This work is part of the series Sewers and bell towers and it is an oil on cardboard measuring 43x55 centimeters and also exhibited at the Reina Sofía Art Museum. After years of optimism, Maruja Mallo enters a pessimism stage with creations of muted and somber tones.

After making a series as lively as that of the vervain, Maruja surprises by introducing a most disturbing subject, especially in the years before the war. This work brings the author closer to telluric surrealism of the artists of the Vallecas School, like Benjamín Palencia or Alberto Sánchez.

Transgressive and close to the Republic, Maruja Mallo was defined by Dalí as an artist half angel and half shellfish. An intellectual and cultured woman who joined the group of founders of the "no hat”.

In this spirit, Maruja painted a series of seven works called “The religion of work”.The Wheat Surprise It was painted in 1936 and is a surrealist work in which the painter represents the goddess of agriculture Demeter, mother earth, from which 3 spikes germinate, number of harmony for Pythagoreans. A painting that is influenced by the philosopher María Zambrano and seems to be a celebration of the process of change promised by the Second Republic.

She had to go into exile during the civil war, but her return to Spain in the 1960s was a breath of fresh air for the art world.

If you want to read more articles similar to Maruja Mallo: most important works, we recommend that you enter our category of History.

• GANDARA, Consuelo de la. Maruja Mallo. Ministry of Education, 1978.
• GARCIA, Rosa Maria Ballesteros. Maruja Mallo (1902-1994) From the sewers to outer space. Aposta: Journal of Social Sciences, 2004, no 13, p. 1.
• GISBERT, Rosa Ruiz. Maruja Mallo and the generation of 27. Arriarán Island: cultural and scientific magazine, 2006, no 28, p. 223-240.
• GONZALEZ, Shirley Mangini. Maruja Mallo: Bohemia incarnate. Arenal: Magazine of women's history, 2007, vol. 14, no 2, p. 291-305.
• MAYAYO, Patricia. Maruja Mallo: the photographic portrait and the "invention of oneself" in the Spanish avant-garde. Modes: art history magazine, 2017, vol. 1, not 1, p. 70-89.
• VAL CUBERO, Alejandra. The professionalization of Spanish women artists. The case of Maruja Mallo (1902-1995) and Amalia Avia (1926-2011). 2013.