Ignacio Pinazo

The current exhibition held at the IVAM and at the Fine Arts Museum of Valencia, that store his collections, aims at establishing a dialogue or sequence between the works of the Valencian master. Pinazo’s collection at the Valencian Fine Arts Museum is exemplary as a fruit of popular generosity. Mainly consisting of a series of select pieces donated to the Academy by José Pinazo Martínez and Ignacio Pinazo Martínez, sons of the artist; generous citizen donations to the Valencian Fine Arts Museum and the San Carlos Academy are added to this decisive collection. IVAM’s collection was acquired from his descendents and completed with donations of the Casar Pinazo family. This way, Pinazo turns into one of the pillars of the permanent collection, as it happens to be with Julio González. The risk of including Pinazo in this context is a fact which can not be argued, but to a large extent justifiable if one takes Pinazo into account as the core of Valencian modernity, although his modernity exhausts with himself. A series of works that allow a more profound analysis on Pinazo have been systematically published since 2001, also permitting to localize and publicize a considerable amount of important paintings which whereabouts were unknown. However, opposite to what we would think, there is still a lot left about this great artist to study and catalogue; this is precisely the aim of the Pinazo Chair that the University of Valencia created in 2010 with support of the IVAM, holding this exhibition within the grounds of this context, proposed by both museums, which has allowed scarcely seen works to be rescued and displayed in a different context. Besides this, 2012 will be the centenary of the awarding of the Medal of Honour at the National Exhibition, an event that can seem of little importance nowadays, although it did have in the past; there is nothing else other than to consult the broad information revealed in the catalogue regarding this matter, where there is a whole chapter dedicated to the critical gathering of the award. At the exhibition there is also an important series of paintings and drawings created around 1912. Given the nature of both museums collections, we have concentrated on his production of portraits and landscapes: portraits and figures are exposed at the IVAM, and the landscapes and still life, together with some other portrait set in open air, at the Fine Arts Museum. Pinazo was an extraordinary portrait painter, having been recognized as one of the masters of the genre by the critics of his time; in fact, the first medals he achieved at the national contest were granted to him by his portraits. But it is also true that his contribution to landscape was also decisive, and it is in this discipline where the modernity and coherence of his paintings can be made evident today or easily noticeable for some. Pinazo turned his friends and family into recurrent models as well as an inexhaustible source of inspiration. His attention to social, festive and popular life starts gaining relevance in the notes and chronicles from Rome, although it would later expand in Valencia and Godella. Already at the beginning, Valencia had supplied him with inspiration how it can be appreciated in a series of small paintings made about processions and fireworks that can now be seen at this joint exhibition.