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GODOFREDO ORTEGA MUÑOZ (San Vicente de Alcántara, Badajoz, 1899 - Madrid, 1982). "Landscape of Lake Maggiore", ca.1920. Oil on cardboard. Provenance: -Private collection, Massimo Uccelli, Italy. Inherited from his grandparents, in turn, received it from the painter while he lived in his house in Via Antonio Rosmini, in Stresa, near Lake Maggiore (Italy). -Private collection, Turin. With certificate of the Ortega Muñoz Foundation. With export permit from Italy and Spain. Measurements: 34 x 43 cm. Ortega Muñoz immortalizes in this painting a wide panoramic view of the idyllic mountainous landscape of the Maggiore Lake, outlined in the background by bluish motañas of snowy summits. Ortega lived in this area of northern Italy, close to the Swiss border, so he portrayed it on numerous occasions, showing a great handling of the shades and lights of this icy region. Ortega, heir to the Vallecas school, often prioritized this type of stark landscapes, realistic but far from academic, a solitary space with which he sought to awaken the viewer's emotions. Ortega Muñoz was one of the great creators of the contemporary Spanish landscape. He started in art when he was still a child, self-taught, and despite his father's advice, in 1919, at the age of twenty, he decided to move to Madrid to devote himself to painting. There he will dedicate himself from the first moment to making copies of the great masters in the Prado Museum and in the old Museum of Modern Art. He continued his self-taught training and began to paint outdoors in the surroundings of the Dehesa de la Villa, accompanied by other young artists such as the Filipino Fernando Amorsolo. A year later he decided to move to Paris, where he met his lifelong friend, the poet Gil Bel. In Paris he also got to know the work of Van Gogh, Gauguin and Cézanne, but at the same time he experienced the formal and ideological crisis that was developing in this interwar period, which would lead him to leave France to travel south, to Italy, where he would find in the masters of the past more authentic values of spirituality, simplicity and purity. Ortega Muñoz will travel through Italy from North to South between 1921 and 1922, and in Lago Maggiore he meets the English painter Edward Rowley Smart, with whom he will spend a short period of apprenticeship. With him Ortega Muñoz comes to the conclusion that, in the face of the apparent unreasonableness of contemporary art, it is necessary to return to nature and return to are the authenticity of spiritual truths and simple emotions. In 1926 he returned to Spain, where he was the protagonist of one of the founding excursions of the Vallecas School. Shortly afterwards, in 1927, he held his first exhibition at the Círculo Mercantil in Zaragoza. Then he leaves Spain again, and this time he travels through Central Europe, passing through Zurich, Brussels and several German cities. In 1928, in Worpswede, he comes into contact with a colony of artists of expressionist language, interested in landscapes and peasant life, as a reaction against the sophisticated artifices and refinements of the avant-garde. Notably influenced by his experience in Worpswede, Ortega Muñoz returns to France in 1928, and between 1930 and 1933 he continues to travel between Central Europe and Northern Italy; he finally arrives in Cairo in 1933, a date at which his skills as a portraitist have provided him with a comfortable lifestyle and important contacts. He exhibits in Alexandria with an enormous success, which will lead him to repeat the experience a year later, presenting an almost anthological exhibition in which his love for nature, the balance between color and mood, and the atmosphere of stillness and sadness characteristic of his language can already be appreciated. In 1935 he returns to Spain and the following year he presents an exhibition at the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid. However, the Civil War forced him to leave Spain; after the war he returned to his hometown, and finally reunited with the silent and lonely expanse of his landscape and with the close reality of that world that he felt as authentically his own.

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GODOFREDO ORTEGA MUÑOZ (San Vicente de Alcántara, Badajoz, 1

Estimate 10 000 - 12 000 EUR
Starting price 4 600 EUR

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ESTEBAN VICENTE PÉREZ (Turégano, Segovia, 1903 - New York, 2001). Untitled, 1967. Ink on paper. Signed. Exhibitions: Madrid, Elvira González Gallery, "Esteban Vicente. Black and white", 17 March - 14 April 2000, page 33 (reprod.). Barcelona, Alejandro Sales Gallery, "Esteban Vicente", November 2006 (reprod.). Measurements: 48 x 70 cm; 70 x 90 cm (frame). Esteban Vicente enters, in 1921, in the School of Fine Arts of San Fernando, in Madrid, with the purpose of training as a sculptor, but soon decides to devote himself to painting. In 1928 he held his first exhibition, after which he went to Paris, where he remained until 1930. He returned to Spain and exhibited in Barcelona and Madrid, and after the outbreak of the Civil War he worked in hiding in the mountains surrounding the capital. However, the same year of 1936 he decides to go to New York, his wife's place of origin. There he exhibited for the first time at the Kleeman Gallery in 1937. Four years later he obtained the American nationality since, having been a supporter of the Republican side, he decided not to return to Spain. He carried out numerous commissions and exhibitions in the following years, and between 1947 and 1947 he was a professor of painting at the University of Puerto Rico. Upon his return to the United States he established a relationship with the nascent New York School, participating in his exhibitions at the Kootz Gallery (1950), the Ninth Street Art Exhibition (1951) and at the Sidney Janis and Egan Galleries. He was a founding member of the New York Studio School, where he taught for thirty-six years. From the eighties onwards his work began to be known in Spain, retrospectives were dedicated to him (Banco Exterior, 1987, and Museo Reina Sofía, 1997) and he was awarded mentions such as the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts (1990) and the Great Cross of Alfonso X the Wise (1999). In 1998 the Esteban Vicente Museum of Contemporary Art was inaugurated in Segovia, where a large part of his work is preserved today. Vicente's works are kept in major contemporary art museums around the world, such as the Metropolitan, the Guggenheim and the MOMA in New York, the Museo Nacional Reina Sofia in Madrid, the Smithsonian in Washington D.C., the Withney Museum of American Art or the Indianapolis Museum of Art, among others.

VICENTE LÓPEZ PORTAÑA (Valencia, 1772 - Madrid, 1850) "Portrait of a Lady. Oil on canvas. It presents faults on the pictorial surface. Bibliography: Díez, José Luis, Catalogue, Vicente López (1772-1850). Catalogue raisonné. Volume II. Madrid, Fundación de Apoyo a la Historia del Arte Hispánico, 1999, pp.188 (P-735) and 758. It has a 20th-century frame following antique models. Measurements: 46 x 35 cm; 64.5 x 50.5 cm (frame). This work shows features inherited from the painting of López Portaña, influences which can be seen in the objective treatment of the sitter, without any hint of idealisation. It follows a realistic style, influenced by the naturalist tradition. In addition, in the work, we can see the artist's interest in portraying the fabrics and the different qualities that make up the lady's clothing, something very much to Vicente López's taste. Vicente López began his training as a disciple of Antonio de Villanueva at the San Carlos Academy in Valencia, where he was awarded the first-class prize in 1786 and 1789, obtaining a pension to study in Madrid. Once at court, the following year he won first place in the competition at the San Fernando Academy. There he learnt the baroque and colourful sense of composition and a taste for precise and analytical drawing. The Baroque lavishness of the frescoes of Luca Giordano and Corrado Giaquinto also had a decisive influence on his language. Now an established artist, he returned to his native city in 1792. There he received important public and private commissions, including portraits of Ferdinand VII and Marshal Soult. In his portraits López shows his Valencian heritage, the weight of the naturalism of Ribera and Ribalta, as well as his mastery in the reproduction of details and qualities. His quality in the field of portraiture led Ferdinand VII to summon him back to court in 1814, appointing him the following year as his first court painter. From then on he became the most sought-after painter by Spanish high society, alternating his work at court with teaching, official posts and private commissions. In 1823 he took over the artistic direction of the Royal Museum of Paintings, for which he painted a superb portrait of Francisco de Goya, now in the Prado. Works by Vicente López are kept in the Museo del Prado, the Museo de Bellas Artes de Valencia San Pío V, the Academia de San Fernando, the Museo Municipal de Játiva, the Museo Nacional de Arte de Cataluña, the New York Historical Society, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rome and the Fundación Lázaro Galdiano in Madrid.