A Street in Bruges, 1902. Author: ÁLVAREZ DE SOTOMAYOR, Fernando (El Ferrol, La Coruña, 1875–Madrid, 1960). Owner: Fundación María Cristina Masaveu Peterson Collection. © of the photographic reproduction: Fundación María Cristina Masaveu Peterson, 2025. Author of the photograph: Marcos Morilla
Organised by: Fundación Pedro de la Maza Barrié
Curator: D. Javier Barón Thaidigsmann
Works from the FMCMP Collection loaned for the exhibition: A Street in Bruges, 1902. AutHor: Fernando Álvarez de Sotomayor (El Ferrol, La Coruña, 1875-Madrid, 1960). Owner: FMCMP Collection.
Organised to mark the 150th anniversary of the artist’s birth, this major monographic exhibition features approximately seventy-five works from institutions and private collections in Spain, Chile, Italy and France.
The show is structured around a chronological itinerary that charts the different periods in Sotomayor’s artistic output: the first, with its diverse approaches and themes; the paintings made in Chile, starting in 1908; the triumph of genre themes and elegant portraits in the second decade of the century; the in-depth study of these two themes in the third decade; and the evolution of both motifs in the 1930s and after the Spanish Civil War.
Additional aspects explored in the show are the artist’s public dimension through his relations with Latin America as director of the Escuela de Arte de Chile and his organisation of a major exhibition of Spanish painting in Buenos Aires in 1946, and his museological activities as deputy director and then director of the Museo de Prado. Naturally, the exhibition also includes the genre themes related specifically to Galicia.
Made in 1902 during his time at the Spanish Academy in Rome as a government-sponsored artist, A Street in Bruges was painted in the city itself on a trip that Sotomayor made to Belgium with his companion Manuel Benedito, who also painted in the city and employed compositional devices similar to those of Sotomayor.