Las Sinsombrero: 5 women artists that it is necessary to remember

They were recently recovered by the report The Hatless, presented at the 2015 Malaga Film Festival and which rescued the memory of these women. However, for decades they remained literally forgotten; despite having belonged to one of the most representative artistic generations of the Spanish cultural scene, the famous Generation of '27, the anthologies had never included these female artists as part of the group. And it is that, despite the fact that not all of them devoted themselves to poetry, "Las Sinsombrero" were extraordinary creators who maintained a close relationship with the Spanish intelligentsia of the first decades of the twentieth century.

Who were "The Hatless"? In this article we recover the names and history of these women forgotten by traditional historiography.

“Las Sinsombrero”: the origin of the nickname of these women artists

Maruja Mallo (1902-1995) recounts in some interviews she conducted for Televisión Española when she returned from her exile who, one day in the 1920s, was walking through the Puerta del Sol in Madrid in the company of Margarita Meek,

Salvador Dali and Federico Garcia Lorca. At some point they decided to take off their hats, in principle, "to clear up ideas."

However, passersby took it very badly. Getting rid of such a basic element as the hat, especially if it was about women, was a symbol of rebellion that the stale Spanish society was not willing to tolerate. In the case of Dalí and Lorca, and according to Maruja herself in her statements, it was a "clear" indication of her homosexuality. The result: the four were insulted and stoned as they crossed the emblematic Madrid square.

This episode, apparently with no more significance than highlighting the rebellion of Spanish artists at the beginning of the 20th century, was used by the producers of the documentary The Hatless, premiered at the Malaga Film Festival in 2015 and later broadcast on Spanish Television, to name this group of women. Thus, the name was forever attached to them. Her memory was beginning to recover at last.

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Who were "The Hatless"?

The Hatless were women artists whose births are between 1898 and 1914, thus coinciding with the period that also includes the coming into the world of the male representatives of the Generation of 27. Although many of them did not dedicate themselves to writing, they did stand out for being excellent painters, sculptors and actresses, among many other dedications, and maintained a very close relationship with the male intellectuals of his epoch.

These women shared a liberal and republican ideology, they were committed to the emancipation of women and were rebellious and groundbreaking with respect to tradition, which corseted women in the roles of mother and wife. This does not mean that these artists forgot the many centuries of Spanish cultural tradition, because, and in a similar way to what their male counterparts from 27 did, many of them drew inspiration from Spanish history and folklore to create their construction site. This is the case, for example, of the aforementioned Maruja Mallo, whose paintings take traditional motifs such as popular festivals, bullfights and manolas.

Like their peers, these women were greatly influenced by the avant-garde of the 20th century and, in turn, contributed a great deal to the Spanish avant-garde expression. Marga Gil Roësset, for example, was one of the most outstanding sculptors of the moment, whose professional career was cut short by her tragic suicide. On the other hand, Mallo and Margarita Manso were outstanding painters, whose canvases were enormously successful. There are not a few critics who consider Mallo the "Spanish Frida Kahlo", due to the forcefulness and color of her paintings.

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The protagonists of the movement

There are many female names associated with the "Las Sinsombrero" movement and the Spanish cultural scene of the first decades of the 20th century. Next, we briefly review 5 of these artists and their career.

Maruja Mallo (1902-1995), “the Spanish Frida Kahlo”

Her friend Salvador Dalí described her in an almost disturbing way; he said of her that she was half angel, half shellfish. The image of her is easy to evoke; she a dark-haired woman, with an intense gaze and profusely made-up. The painting of her face was, for Maruja Mallo, something essential in her face, as she commented in one of her interviews for TVE. Perhaps it was that same color that she transferred to her canvases, which, due to their forceful shapes and powerful colors, are reminiscent of the work of Frida Kahlo.

Like all of her colleagues, Maruja Mallo (real name Ana María Gómez González) was trained in Madrid. In 1922, at the age of twenty, we find her at the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts, where she studied until 1926. She is a magnificent painter, but also a writer, during the 1920s she collaborated in magazines such as Literary Almanac either western magazine, in whose space the first exhibition of her paintings took place, organized in 1928 by Ortega y Gasset himself, who was impressed by her talent. The show was a resounding success and placed Maruja at the forefront of Madrid artists.

She maintained a loving relationship with Rafael Alberti, with whom she also collaborated intellectually. Together with Miguel Hernández, she planned a literary project directly inspired by the tragic events in Asturias in 1934, when the army repressed the miners' protests with unusual violence. All this is testimony, on the one hand, of the tireless intellectual work of Maruja and, on the other, of her commitment to social issues, in parallel to the male companions of her generation, who in those years had immersed themselves (especially Alberti and Prados) in the so-called "poetry engaged".

Like most of the intellectuals of the time, Mallo had to leave Spain at the outbreak of the Civil War.. He did not return until 1962, after twenty-five years of exile.

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Margarita Manso (1908-1960), Lorca's muse

Some say that she, in addition to being a muse, was also one of the poet's loves. What is certain is that Margarita Manso and Federico García Lorca maintained a close friendship that was cut short with the assassination of the poet from Granada in 1936. The news tore Margarita apart, but the dark shadow of the Civil War still brought her more misfortunes. Because the fratricidal contest was merciless with this woman; To the murder of her friend, we must add that of her husband a few months later, in September 1936, precisely by the opposite side that had assassinated Lorca. A few days later, her brother-in-law and her mother-in-law were also killed.

Margarita went into exile, but she was already dead in soul. She never recovered from the shock that so many deaths had caused her. She returned to Spain in 1938, married a Falangist doctor, and hid her past as an intellectual and republican under a deeply devout attitude. Was she pretending to protect herself, or was she just a devastated woman seeking solace in religion? Margarita Manso is the spitting image of the terrible emotional consequences of war. Like the other “Sin Sombrero”, her life and her work were relegated to oblivion. However, and along with Maruja Mallo (her fellow student of hers at the San Fernando Academy), Manso is one of the most representative painters of the first decades of the Spanish 20th century.

Marga Gil Roësset (1908-1932), the artist who died for love

At least, that is what she has transcended. In fact, until recently it was the only thing that was known about this brilliant sculptor: her impossible love for the poet Juan Ramón Jiménez and her suicide at the age of twenty-four. It is quite common in history that extraordinary women are remembered only for their "sacrifices" for love; Another famous case is that of Jeanne Hébuterne (1898-1920), Modigliani's muse and lover who committed suicide the day after the artist's death, but who was also a promising painter.

Marga's talent is even more exceptional if we take into account that her training was self-taught. In fact, Marga Gil was a child prodigy. In 1920, when she was only twelve years old, she made some beautiful illustrations for the story El niño de oro, a project she had with her sister Consuelo, who later became a writer. In the barely ten years that her artistic career lasted, Marga paints, draws, sculpts, and writes. Although she is especially remembered for her magnificent sculptures, her work is multifaceted, because she was a total artist, from head to toe.

Much has been written about her "love suicide". And, although it is true that her passion for the mature poet did not help her cope with her poor balance emotionally, we can think that this was not the only reason why Marga decided to pull the trigger that afternoon of July 1932. In the diary that she wrote and that her niece Marga Clark recently rescued in a beautiful novel entitled bitter light, Marga Gil leaves testimony of her impossible love and her emotional ups and downs. A sad loss, both human and artistic, since Marga was leaving this world at only twenty-four years old and with a promising career ahead of her.

Ernestina de Champourcín (1905-1999), the highly educated lady

Educated in a conservative family, the poet from Vitoria, Ernestina de Champourcín, moved to Madrid with her family at a very young age. There she tried to study at the university, but, unfortunately for her, she met with the resounding refusal of her father, a very traditionalist monarchist. Despite everything, Ernestina received a very complete education as a child, which led her to master several languages, including French and English.

The refined and aristocratic atmosphere of her family (not surprisingly, her father was Baron de Champourcín) she introduced her from a very young age to reading great classics of literatureshe, both French and Spanish: Victor Hugo, Verlaine or Santa Teresa de Jesús. But Ernestina was not indifferent to contemporary literature; she also read Valle-Inclán, Juan Ramón Jiménez and Rubén Darío. From all this, the young woman drew an indisputable conclusion: she wanted to be a writer and, specifically, a poet. She published her first poems in 1923, in magazines such as Freedom. The 1920s are prolific for Ernestina; The first books of hers see the light (Silent, the voice in the wind), she actively participates in the Lyceum Club Femenino project, founded by María de Maeztu and Concha Méndez, and establishes contact, through through Juan Ramón Jiménez, with the other great writers of 27, including Federico García Lorca, Luis Cernuda and Vicente Alexandre.

In his only novel, the house across the street, published shortly before the outbreak of the Civil War (the great tragedy of the generation) and her exile, paints a portrait of the education received by bourgeois class girls. Probably, she was partly inspired by her own childhood.

Josefina de la Torre (1907-2002), the “island-woman”

Josefina was born in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in 1907, into a family of artists: her maternal grandfather, Agustín Millares Torres, was a musician, novelist and historian (his work is famous General History of the Canary Islands); On the other hand, her brother, Claudio de la Torre, dedicated himself to literature (he was awarded the National Literature Award in 1924) and to cinema.

With such genetics, it is not surprising that Josefina is another example of an extremely versatile woman, because, In addition to being a writer, she was an operatic singer and actress.. Her first collection of poems, Verses and prints, saw the light of day in 1927, when Josefina was only twenty years old; In 1930, she published a second book, poems on the island. Josefina's style was very close to that of the rest of the poets of the Generation of '27, and her poetic talent earned her Gerardo Diego included it, along with her contemporary Ernestina de Champourcín, in his Anthology of Spanish poetry (1934). They were the only two women included in the compilation.

Despite her undeniable talent as a poet, in the 1930s de la Torre leaned towards her lyrical vocation. After the outbreak of the Civil War, she returned to her land in the Canary Islands, where she wrote some soap operas that allowed her and her family to survive in the harsh post-war period. Later, already in full Francoism, she appeared in several films, some directed by her brother, and she also participated in numerous plays. Tireless and tremendously fruitful, Josefina returned to literature during her maturity stage.

In the 1950s she published two novels, memories of a star she and she On the threshold, and in 1968 she returned to poetry with sketchy march. She died in Madrid at the age of 95; She left behind a very complete career that covered numerous fields (including dubbing, since she lent her voice to Marlene Dietrich herself). Pedro Salinas called her the "island-woman"; a beautiful and apparently fragile girl with blue eyes who embodied the ideal of the determined and intellectual woman of the first decades of the 20th century.