40. Spanish Landscape [1920. -1921.]

This oil painting by Ljubo Babić, a prominent painter and encyclopedic figure of Croatian culture and art of the 20th century, belongs to his early Spanish landscape inspiration in which he revealed his vehement painting dominance over the theme. It was perfectly accomplished in the 30s landscapes of Croatian inspiration, which encouraged many of his contemporaries to build with the same zeal not only an individual, but also an original national visual expression. While working on the painting titled Spanish Landscape, Babić was inspired by the great Andalusian tectonic depression which extends at the foot of the eponymous mountains in the hinterland of Malaga, more precisely in Torrox, as Babić himself signed in the upper left corner: Torroks / Beautiful Valley. It is a part of the hinterland of the Mediterranean Sun Coast (Costa del Sol) which inspired him to paint, already in the early 1920s of the last century, an unknown to us, and perhaps the first, painting from the series of his fascinating high viewing point landscape panoramas – like, for example, "My Native Land" (1936) and the "Zagorje Landscape" (1937) from the NMMU collection. About the Spain experience and about the artistic treasure seen in its museums – while he was exploring this dreamland of his from October to December 1920 – he wrote an extensive travelogue "From the trip to Spain". Seventy years later, it was published by the National and University Library and it contains, apart from the painter's scholarly and scrupulous text important for the overall Croatian art history, the reproductions of 35 of Babić's amazing watercolors and drawings created during that journey. They show that Spain – woke up in the then 30-year-old painter – the creative potential to the highest intensity. All the reproduced watercolors are today in the Graphic Collections of the NSK and – although of modest dimensions – according to the author of the introductory study and book reviewers, these works are the strongest within the painter's entire oeuvre, and they are the paradigm of the difference between physical size and monumentality in fine arts.1 Shortly after the book was published, Gallery Forum organized the exhibition "Homage à Lj. B." on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the painter's birth. At the exhibition, alongside the Spanish watercolors, oil paintings of bird's-eye perspectives and Croatian landscape inspirations from the mentioned 30s were displayed.2 Instead of some "dry art historical" conclusion to the bidding, let's quote Babić himself at the beginning of his travelogue: " San Sebastian – 15. X. 1920. - Finally! Spain! This word represented for me a longing for all that is hidden and miraculous, not easily deciphered. I still remember today how as a child I enjoyed traveling with my finger on a map in an old lexicon. (...) Reading the Spanish map was a song to me. Adventures, feverish curiosity, women, passions, all of this was embodied in this song. Ravines, hills, impassable ravines, camouflaged men, toreadors, Carmenes, and much else, all walked in front of my imagination like real hidalgos. Finally, my dreams become reality, here I am in Spain. Unfortunately, I am no longer a child, the tremors have passed, but I still have – an insatiable curiosity. (...) 21. X. Today I saw a hand, painted by (El) Greco. My Spanish journey is neither too expensive nor too burdensome. I saw a hand, painted by Greco. (…) BRP

Dimensions

width 53 cm, height 72 cm

Description

oil on canvas, signed with a monogram at the bottom left, in black, "Lj. B."; located top left, in black, illegible

Dating

1920. -1921.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

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