Hermenegildo Anglada-Camarasa Barcelona 1871-Pollensa 1959

Francesc Uriach, Barcelona, 1937
Joseph María Uriach, Barcelona, 1944

Painted circa 1915.

Plaintive yet passionate, earthy yet full of grace, the Spanish gitana has been all but synonymous with Spain since her kinsfolk first landed on Iberia's shores in the fifteenth century from as far afield as India.  The Spanish came to revere but also fear gypsies because of their nomadic way of life and the freedoms it seemed to allow. For some three hundred years, they were persecuted, their settlements broken up, their language and rituals denied them. Yet, paradoxically, the hardship they endured nurtured a whole sub-culture most nobly embodied by dance and the flamenco.

By the nineteenth century, Spain had embraced Gypsy myth and lore. The Romantics were in awe of the gypsies for their other worldliness and seeming ability to commune with nature, while the following generation of artists and writers, driven by patriotism in the wake of Spain's colonial losses, venerated the gypsy as the quintessential icon of Spanish identity. Nonell, Zuloaga, and Solana were among Anglada's contemporaries who endowed the gitana with a gravitas, at times playful, at times austere, that linked her inextricably with Spain's psyche. 

Anglada, too, was captivated by the gitana, but his fascination stemmed more from the aesthetic potential he saw in her than from what she stood for. He had first explored the subject during his years in Paris, where he occasionally depicted gitanas as the colourfully exotic denizens of gaudy music halls and cafés-concerts. But it was following his move to Mallorca that the gitana really flourished in his work. 

Like Gauguin in Tahiti (fig. 1), Anglada found a new freedom of expression in Mallorca, adopting a highly coloured and luminous palette inspired by the island's light and landscapes.  Depicting the gypsy and her child as a synthesis of brilliant colours and beautiful forms, he lifts them out of reality on to a wholly aesthetic plane. The colours are mesmeric, while the striking rhythmical forms have a musicality about them, conjuring up the sound of castanets, heels tapping the floor, skirts swirling, and dancing the flamenco with fiery grace.

Fig.1, Paul Gauguin, The Offering, oil on canvas, 1902, E. G. Bührle Foundation, Zurich 273D05102