Maruja Mallo

Maruja Mallo was a Spanish surrealist painter who was part of the Generation of 27, a group of avant-garde artists and writers that emerged in Spain in the 1920s. She was also one of the "Las Sinsombrero", a group of female artists who defied the social norms of their time by not wearing hats and expressing their creativity and independence. Mallo was born in Viveiro, a town in the northern region of Galicia, on January 5, 1902. She was the fourth daughter of fourteen children born to Justo Gómez Mallo, a customs officer, and María del Pilar González Lorenzo. She showed an interest in art from an early age and received her first artistic training at the School of Arts and Crafts of Avilés, where her family moved in 1913. In 1922, she moved to Madrid with her family and enrolled at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, where she met Salvador Dalí, who introduced her to the world of surrealism and the Generation of 27. In Madrid, she befriended other artists, writers, and intellectuals such as Federico García Lorca, Luis Buñuel, Rafael Alberti, Concha Méndez, Margarita Manso, María Zambrano, and Ernesto Giménez Caballero. She also collaborated with literary publications and illustrated poems by Alberti and others. Her first solo exhibition was organized by the philosopher José Ortega y Gasset in 1928 at the Revista de Occidente gallery. It featured her series of paintings Verbenas [Street Fairs], which depicted scenes of urban life in Madrid with vibrant colors and dynamic compositions. Her paintings were praised for their originality and freshness by critics and audiences alike. In 1931, she traveled to Paris with Alberti and met André Breton and other surrealists. She also studied stage design and exhibited her series of paintings Cloacas y Campanarios [Sewers and Bell Towers], which explored the contrast between the organic and the mechanical in modern society. In 1933, she returned to Spain and participated in the First Surrealist Exhibition in Madrid, along with Dalí, Buñuel, Óscar Domínguez, Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, and others. She also joined the Alliance of Anti-Fascist Intellectuals and became involved in social and political causes. In 1936, after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Mallo fled to Portugal and then to Argentina, where she settled in Buenos Aires. There she continued her series La Religión del Trabajo [The Religion of Work], which depicted workers in different professions with a mystical and symbolic approach. She also traveled extensively throughout Latin America and was inspired by its geography, art, and cultures. She created her series Naturalezas Vivas [Living Natures] and Cabezas de Mujer [Heads of Women], which reflected her fascination with nature and femininity. In 1948, she exhibited in New York at the Julien Levy Gallery and in 1950 in Paris at the Galerie Pierre Loeb. She also participated in several group exhibitions in Argentina and other countries. In 1961, she returned to Spain for a retrospective exhibition at the Galería Mediterránea in Madrid. She moved back to Spain permanently in 1965 and lived in Madrid until her death on February 6, 1995. She was awarded the Fine Arts Gold Medal by the Spanish Ministry of Culture in 1982 for her outstanding contribution to Spanish art. Mallo's work is characterized by her personal vision of reality, influenced by surrealism and magic realism. She combined elements of fantasy and rationality, tradition and modernity, nature and culture, in a unique and expressive style. She explored themes such as urban life, social issues, sexuality, religion, mythology, and cosmology. She used a variety of techniques and materials, such as oil, tempera, collage, ceramics, and metal. She is considered one of the most original and innovative artists of the 20th century Spanish avant-garde and one of the pioneers of female artistic expression in Spain.