Ignacio Pinazo Camarlench

Spanish, Valencia 1849-1916 Godella

“Academy, Nude”
Signed lower left corner
Oil on canvas
35 1/2 H by 20 1/5 L inches
51 H by 37 L
Everything vibrates around the woman, nothing remains except her strong, lively, fully present figure. Everything falls apart around her, only she is solid, only her body remains while even her hand, in motion, becomes blurred. Beyond the sensuality of the interview, the vision of forbidden intimacy, we contemplate life in all its richness, in its beautiful mutability. Pinazo advances towards modernity remembering Velázquez, and opens the way to Sorolla with a language of undone brushstroke that wants to capture the fleetingness of the real, the beating of life.
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Description

Ignacio Pinazo Camarlench works in this nude academy in 1880 in his stayed in Rome, with his personal black and earthy colors, neutral and dark tones on which he shines, reflecting the light, the bare skin of a woman sitting on a simple wooden bench. His body is rotated from the knees to turn our backs, showing us the neck, head bowed, chest and abdomen line, finally legs crossed securing the position. The women’s movement is captured by the painter with the skill of a master of impressionism; The body rotates and closes on itself, hiding in our eyes at times, the right arm in the air, the hand just a blur in motion, although magnificently worked in space, perfectly integrated into the atmosphere. Around it the air vibrates with loose, energetic brushstrokes, which bring life to the neutral and dark background inherited from the great master of Spanish painting, Diego Velázquez. As in the works of that one, here the space and the figure merge perfectly, they almost feel the air around the model, the light that vibrates on their skin. Also like Velázquez, Pinazo captures the lively life of the figure through a gestural brushstroke, skillfully controlled, and a subtle chromatic game based on neutral colors. The pictorial material accumulates or withdraws, reflecting the eternally mutable character of reality itself.
In this academy, work therefore of study, of learning, we also see a great mastery of composition and drawing. The figure is large, monumental, and its silhouette approaches and moves away from the margins of the canvas creating expressive moments of spatial tension that endow the image with a corporeal majesty. This dynamic game is also based on a firm and powerful drawing in its line, whose strength remains under the layer of paint, preventing the roundness of the shapes from being lost. In this way Pinazo builds both corporeality and three-dimensional space with no more supporting elements than the stroke, the brushstroke and a magnificent modeling of the lights and shadows, again heir to Baroque masters such as Velázquez.

 

https://www.museodelprado.es/pinazo

http://hispanicsociety.emuseum.com/pinazo

Read Patricia Ortiz’s research