Ana Maria Gómez González (1902-1995), better known as Maruja Mallo, was a Spanish painter framed within the surrealist current. In addition, she was part of the well-known Generation of 27, as one of the artists with a marked innovative style.
Maruja Mallo began to prepare in the arts, especially in painting, from an early age. Later a family transfer to the Spanish capital put her in contact with great artists and intellectuals. From then on, his professional life began to boom..
Maruja's artistic work was characterized by the presence of Egyptian art, as well as by geometric shapes. The artist made her paintings with the intention that the emotional part was above reason, which led her to break with what is traditionally established in painting.
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Maruja was born on January 5, 1902 in the town of Viveiro, Lugo, in the bosom of a large and traditional family. His parents were Justo Gómez Mallo, a customs worker, and María del Pilar González Lorenzo. The painter was the fourth of fourteen siblings.
At the age of eleven, Maruja Mallo moved with her family to Avilés; Due to his father's work reasons, he lived there for nine years, from 1913 to 1922. At that time, in addition to receiving private lessons, he also began studying at the School of Arts and Crafts..
Mallo went to live in Madrid with his family in 1922. There he began to study at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, from where he graduated in 1926. It was the time of friendship with the Generation of 27; was related to Dalí, Concha Méndez, Luís Buñuel, Rafael Alberti, among others.
Maruja began to make her way into the artistic world in 1927, the year in which her mother also passed away. He actively participated in the first Vallecas School, whose objective was to spread European avant-garde ideas throughout Spain; the initiative was from the sculptor Alberto Sánchez and the painter Benjamín Palencia.
In the same way, the painter carried out works for printed media such as The Literary Gazette Y The West Magazine, as well as she was hired to create the covers of several books. In 1928, with the organization of José Ortega y Gasset, he exhibited ten of his magical realism works with great success..
At the beginning of the 1930s, the artist began a series of collaborations with the writer and also a painter, Rafael Alberti, whom she met in the 1920s, and with whom she also had a romantic relationship. Together they made the illustrations of I was a fool and what I've seen has made me two fools.
At the same time, Mallo painted his work Sewers Y Steeples. In 1932 he traveled to Paris after a scholarship awarded by the Board for the Expansion of Studies. There he made friends with personalities such as Joan Miró, Marx Ernst and others, he also attended the conversations of Paul Éluard and André Breton.
Mallo got a space in Paris to exhibit his pictorial work. His first exhibition in the city of light was in 1932, at the Pierre Loeb gallery; with these works he began in the surrealist current. His friend Breton acquired the painting Scarecrow, and presented it with painters of the stature of Pablo Picasso.
After having spent two years in France, he returned to Spain. His work was already recognized, both people and organizations requested his paintings. He was also part of the Iberian Artists Society, and began to develop an art of geometric type.
In 1933, the year of the Second Spanish Republic, Mallo devoted herself to teaching drawing at some institutions, while also designing plates for the Madrid School of Ceramics. At that time he began to interact with the poet Miguel Hernández.
Mallo and Hernández had an explosive love relationship, but they also worked together on Children of stone. The painter inspired the poet to write The lightning that never stops. ANDn the following years the couple separated, and Miguel found a different love.
In 1936, when the Civil War broke out, the painter was in her native Galicia doing work on the pedagogical missions. During that time he held exhibitions in Barcelona and London, until in 1937 he had to flee and headed for Portugal..
In the Portuguese country she was received by her friend, the Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral, with her help she went to Buenos Aires. He soon began to resume his life, and gave some lectures on the plastic arts; in Argentina he lived for twenty-five years.
The years that Maruja Mallo spent in exile meant success and growth, but also loneliness. During the first years he worked in some magazines, and he dedicated himself to a constant creation. He also managed to take his works to other latitudes such as Brazil, Paris and New York..
From the years away from his homeland were the series Land Y The masks. In 1938 he had the honor of creating the scenery for the play Cantata in the grave, of Federico García Lorca, who was his friend. The following year his book went on sale The popular in Spanish plastic through my work.
There was a long season between the mid-forties and fifties where Mallo's creativity stagnated. For this reason, she made a trip to Chile and invited Pablo Neruda to accompany her to Easter Island, to renew and be inspired to carry out work that had commissions.
Inspiration arrived and with it the opportunity to travel to New York, for an exhibition of his art at the Carroll Carstairs gallery. After several years of work, in 1962 he left the Big Apple for Madrid. That was his first trip back to Spain.
Maruja Mallo returned to her country in 1962, but her return was not entirely easy, after twenty-five years of exile, she became an unknown artist. However, he decided to start over, did some exhibitions and began The denizens of the void, her final series as a painter.
During those years in Spain, Mallo was recovering his place in the artistic spaces. So much so that he received several tributes and recognitions, including the Gold Medal of the Community of Madrid in 1990. He died at 93 years of age, admitted to a hospice in Madrid, on February 6, 1995.
The pictorial work of Maruja Mallo was characterized by being mainly surrealist. Having been an advanced woman for the time in which she was developed, she managed to break with established common and traditional patterns, which gave her work a unique and unparalleled style.
Mallo's main objective was to put reasoning aside, so he captured emotion and feelings in his paintings. He constantly sought to show the history or life behind the real, hence his paintings could sometimes be strange.
Most of the pictures or paintings created by Maruja Mallo enjoyed color, just like the personality of her painting. His creativity to combine colors gave his art certain airs of movement, which gave more vitality to his festivals and parties..
In his so-called dark stage, between 1945 and 1957, Mallo's color palette also changed shades. Her emotions, and what she felt during that period, led her to paint in grayscale, black and brown colors, which overshadowed her art and the symmetry of her geometry..
Many of Maruja's paintings were framed within the Egyptian, as well as seeking the perfect use of geometric figures. On the other hand, it can be seen that the painter's thinking about women was evolved, that is why there are paintings where strength and feminine value are present.
Mallo's free, daring and audacious personality was reflected in his painting. Her strength and daring led her to paint what she wanted, and in the way she wanted it, leaving in each of her works a touch of magic and surprising expressiveness that were the subject of countless criticisms that she omitted.
- The verbena (1927).
- The kermesse (1928).
- Song of the ears (1929).
- The footprint (1929).
- Dirt and excrement (1932).
- Surprise in wheat (1936).
- Figures (1937).
- Head of woman (1941).
- More expensive (1942).
- Living Natures Series (1942).
- The bunch of grapes (1944).
- Gold (1951).
- Agol (1969).
- Geonaut (1965).
- Jungle (1979).
- Concorde (1979).
- Mask three twenty (1979).
- Airagu (1979).
- Macro and microcosm acrobats (nineteen eighty one).
- Acrobats (nineteen eighty one).
- Protozoa (nineteen eighty one).
- Panting (1982).
- Acrobat (1982).
- Protoschema (1982).
- Breeds (1982).
- Ether Travelers (1982).
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