MY FAMILY, 1944 (FOUNDATION).
Julia Minguillón's favorite model is her sister Carmen, who appears in the three paintings she makes almost simultaneously: Portrait of Carmen, María de Magdala , for which a friend of Francisco Leal Insua, her husband, Carlos Pardo Menéndez, lends the skull; and the Virgin of the Air , which will appear in the International Exhibition of Sacred Art in Vitoria and where, in addition to the sister, there is a young model, a child from Lorenzana who will do in the painting of the Child Jesus, and who has an airplane hanging from his hand. He is the son of two popular types, "El Tremendo" and "La Piruxa" (Carballo-Calero Ramos, 1984, p. 20).
VIRGIN OF THE AIR (ABANCA Collection):
He will be taken to the 1941 National Championship with the Doloriñas School .
From there it will go to the Spanish Art Exhibition in Berlin and from there to Venice.
Back in Spain, it appears in January and February 1945 in Madrid, in an individual exhibition held by the artist at the Círculo de Bellas Artes (Carballo-Calero Ramos, 1984, p. 20).
For all these paintings, her husband, Francisco Leal Insua, provided her with colors and fabrics, he sent her threads with which she sewed her own dresses, one facet of Julia was designing and making models, and above all, he constantly encouraged her in her letters.
In December 1939, she began a painting, perhaps the painter's most beloved work, bequeathed to the Museum of Lugo after her death, it is a large panel, MY FAMILY (Carballo-Calero Ramos, Mª Victoria, 1984, p. twenty).
In the summer of 1944 an unfortunate event occurred in the family, the premature death of her sister Carmen in Lugo on July 21, Julia, who had not yet put the finishing touches on the painting My Family, left her sister's figure for always only sketched.
On April 10, 1945, the first exhibition of gold medal-winning artists was inaugurated at the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, to which this work participated (Carballo-Calero Ramos, 1984, p. 23).
The husband's sister, the husband, the painter herself and the dog that appears in the painting, more nourished, more vigorous, with a much more evident expressive maturity, mark a path that Julia must insist on (Azcoaga, Enrique, 1945. )
The figures located on the canvas placed on the easel are inferior in quality.
The dog is none other than the one that appears in Goya's portrait, Carlos III hunter , although in this case it is a brown wolf, while Goya paints a pale podenco.
My family , due to the way it had to be painted, makes one think of two masterpieces of Spanish painting, Las Meninas and La Familia de Carlos IV. While Goya paints The Family of Carlos IV placing it in front of the mirror, Velázquez and Julia Minguillón paint with two mirrors. On the sofa where the painter's parents are sitting, the place of one of them can be perfectly guessed: the other, facing the family, and behind Julia, would allow him to paint himself within the family scene.
There is a window, and in it the slight curtain that appears under a thicker one and that prevents seeing the landscape, without a doubt to concentrate the viewer (Rodríguez Filloy, Benito, 1945).
On the window sill, a completely transparent glass vase adds a kind note to the scene (Carballo-Calero Ramos, 1984, pp. 42-43).
Bibliography:
- Carballo-Calero Ramos, (1984) Julia Minguillón, "Pedro Barrié de la Maza" Foundation, La Coruña.
- Azcoaga, Enrique, (1945). The synthetic realism of Julia Minguillón. Magazine, Madrid, numbers 87-88.
- Rodríguez Filloy, Benito (1945), Above.
