La Maja del Guadalquivir

Hermenegildo Anglada Camarasa was the youngest painter of the second generation of Modernistes and one to make a name for himself internationally. After training in Barcelona, he moved to Paris in 1894 where he attended the Académie Julian. During this period in his life he painted numerous pictures of Paris night-life, concentrating on pallet and light effects. Anglada’s painting was visibly influenced by artists such as Toulouse Lautrec, Gustav Klimt and Kees van Dongen. A very significant turning point in his style came in 1909, with the arrival in Paris of impresario Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, featuring Vaslav Nijinski and Anna Pavlova. The Ballet Russes was a social and artistic sensation that revolutionised both tastes and customs. Anglada Camarasa was deeply moved by the sets and costumes of vibrant oranges, purples and greens, to the extent that from then on the pale shades in his female portraits were replaced by brilliant multicolours. The impact in Paris of the aesthetics of Diaghilev’s production was decisive for the development of his work. Following a trip to Valencia in the summer of 1904, his work centred more on Spanish traditional culture, with its marked decorativism, and he incorporated elements from the hispanic decorativism in his Parisian work. He grew more successful throughout Europe and his work found a particularly favourable public in Italy and amongst the artists of the Russian modern school, including among his admirers Maksim Gorka and Vasili Kandinsky. He participated in numerous international exhibitions: Munich, Venice (Biennales VI, VII and XI), Paris (Salon National, Salon d'Automne and Salon des Orientalistes), Barcelona, Berlin, Brussels, London, Zurich, Buenos Aires (Grand Prix, 1910), Rome (Grand Prix , 1911), Prague and Moscow. His influence also reached young artists like Pablo Picasso, ten years younger than him and with whom he was in contact during his stay in Montmartre, or María Blanchard, who was his student between 1908 and 1913.