Carlos Baca-Flor

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Self-portrait ca.1893

Carlos Baca-Flor (* 1867 or 1869 in Islay, Arequipa Province , Peru ; † February 20, 1941 in Neuilly-sur-Seine , Paris ) was a Peruvian painter who spent most of his life in France and the USA and there was highly regarded as a portraitist of important personalities. Contrary to the art movements of his time, he retained a conservative academic style of painting in his naturalistic portraits, but without beautiful or idealizing, not only considering the external correctness, but also the inner truth, while his other works reveal influences of Symbolism and Post-Impressionism.

biography

Abel muerto 1886

According to his biographers, Carlos Baca-Flor was born in the port of Islay in the Peruvian province of Arequipa as the son of the Bolivian Carlos Baca-Flor y Huáscar and the Peruvian Julia Falcon. There are different details about his date of birth. The information about his father is equally contradictory: he is said to have spoken several foreign languages ​​and various indigenous dialects, was secretary to the Bolivian general and former president Belzu , and fled to Peru after his assassination in 1865, but according to other information he was only a simple worker be. The mother of the artist Julia Falcon de Baca-Flor was a highly educated woman who grew up in Chile and with whom her son had a very close relationship throughout his life. The family included an older half-brother from a previous illegitimate relationship of the father and a younger sister. In 1871 at the latest, when the ferry connections from Islay were discontinued, but probably earlier, the family moved to Santiago de Chile, where the father probably died in 1872 and the mother had to support the children with handicrafts and piano lessons. After finishing school and a brief apprenticeship with a dentist, the boy was allowed to enter the Academia de Bellas Artes de Santiago in 1882, where he received art lessons from Professors Giovanni Mochi and Cosme San Martín for five years . He proved to be so talented that he received first prizes from the Academy for his work between 1883 and 1886 and caused a sensation at art exhibitions with his paintings. By delivering the best work at the Academie for three consecutive years, he qualified for the Rome Prize, a grant from the Chilean government to study in Rome for five years. Since this required Chilean citizenship and his pride forbade Baca-Flor to give up his Peruvian one in view of the humiliating defeat of Peru in the previous so-called Saltpeter War, he refused to accept this scholarship.

This made him a hero for the Peruvian ambassador in Santiago Carlos Maria Elias, whom he brought to Lima in 1887 at the invitation of President Andrés Avelino Cáceres with the promise of a scholarship of the same amount from the State of Peru. However, the approval of this scholarship by the parliament of the state, which was heavily indebted after the lost war, dragged on. As in Santiago before, the young artist also made a series of portraits in Lima. So he painted the President of Peru, his wife and daughters, one of which, Hortencia, was to remain his first and only great love. In 1890 Baca-Flor was finally able to set out for Europe; He took his mother, who had remained in Santiago until then, with him on this trip. After a short stay in Paris, Baca-Flor traveled on to Rome, where he passed the entrance exam at the Academia de San Lucas as the best among 84 applicants. Here he had to start again from scratch with the study of anatomy, aesthetics, perspective, architecture and art history, which, as an academically trained painter, brought him incomprehension on the part of his fellow students. However, he found recognition from the director of the Spanish Academy in Rome, Francisco Pradilla , who encouraged him in his efforts. Baca-Flor became friends with the sculptor Miquel Blay , who created a bronze bust of Baca-Flor in 1892 and dedicated it to him as his best friend.

Academia femenina 1893

When the first half of the grant was used up and the new government of Peru hesitated to pay out the second half, Baca-Flor and his mother went through times of great hardship. Baca-Flor wrote in the winter of 1892: “I, who had such high hopes, so much confidence in the first impulses of that time of youth, have before my eyes the death of all my illusions ... I spend the hours in my studio with crossed ones Poor, go up and down like a lion, without money to pay for a model, without paints and even without a piece of wood for the stove in this terrible winter. "And:" I haven't had a centavo for 3 months . I sold everything except the canvases and frames ... ”. While other less talented students sold paintings for a living, Baca-Flor refused to put his work on the market because it ran counter to his idea of ​​an artist vocation. He only received secret financial support from his honored Hortencia Caceres. To support himself and his mother, he gave painting lessons himself. When the second part of his scholarship finally arrived at the beginning of 1892, he paid his debts, sent his mother back home with part of the money and everything he did not need, including the studies he had done in Rome, and went to Pradillas Council to Paris.

Paris Nocturne 1897–1901

Here he enrolled in the Académie Julian and practiced drawing, painting and sculpture on unclothed models. In 1894, after a dispute with their director Jean Paul Laurens, he made another trip to Rome, Naples and Sicily. Doubting his ability, he went back to Paris in 1894 to compete at the Academie Julian and won nine first prizes there. From this point onwards, Baca-Flor began to bring his style closer to contemporary trends. He commuted between Paris and Rome, where he studied the old Italian masters, and made friends with Antonio Mancini . Eventually he won over the government of Peru to grant him another 30,000 francs for the execution of a great historical work, which was never carried out. During this time he also made friends with the Catalan painter Hermenegildo Anglada Camarasa , with whom he roamed the Parisian cabarets and concert cafes. They made post-impressionist color sketches of great stylistic similarity of Paris nightlife on site, as evidenced by pictures in the collection of the Caixa in the former Grand Hotel in Palma and in the Museo de Arte de Lima (MALI). It was Baca-Flor who found this style of painting earlier than the Catalan, which explains why the latter later called the Peruvian his master.

John Pierpont Morgan 1909

After the support of the Peruvian state had been withdrawn and after several years of starvation, Baca-Flor had made a name for himself as a portraitist, although he was never represented in any of the Paris salons or any other exhibition. He made his living so successfully through commissioned work and teaching his students that he was able to write in a letter from 1906: “Without having exhibited in the salon myself, I can say that in eight years I have won four third prizes, two second, one first and received the largest of the Champs de Mars ”. He experienced his definitive breakthrough in 1907 with his portraits of Counts Chabannes La Pallice and Lafont, which were presented in the salon's hall of honor. The following year he painted the portrait of the couturier Charles Worth , which the American banker JP Morgan saw during his visit to Paris, which prompted him to commission his portrait from Baca-Flor. With this order, Baca-Flor, freed from financial hardships, finally arrived in the highest circles. The negotiations dragged on because the banker had little time, but the painter asked for 60 meetings. Eventually he agreed to follow his model to New York, where he arrived in the spring of 1908. He worked on the painting for three months, not without tensions between the self-confident artist and the busy, no-nonsense magnate. But he was so satisfied with the result that he immediately ordered six copies, each original for the price of US $ 20,000. Since then, Baca-Flor has not accepted an order for less. An estimated 130 to 150 portraits were made for magnates and their families by Baca-Flor between 1910 and 1937. He could choose his clients. During this period he is said to have become the world's wealthiest painter of his time. After his first studio in New York was completely burned out in 1914 with 20 of his paintings, valuable carpets and some paintings by great masters, he moved into two floors in Manhattan at 58 W 57th St, where he lived and worked. He received his guests on the lower floor, which looked like a small museum: none of his paintings were on display, but French, Italian Flemish and Spanish masters such as Canaletto , Mancini , Degas , El Greco , Velázquez , de Heem , Rembrandt and a Leonardo Image attributed to da Vinci , showcases with coin collections, etc. His library identified him as a cultured man who recited Virgil's Aeneid in Latin but could not speak English despite the 30 years he spent in the United States. The master was surrounded by two women who looked after him like a father and served him as housekeepers and companions, took care of his written and financial affairs, and to whom he transferred all his assets in 1935: the French painter Maria Luisa Faivre, who followed with his mother in 1911 New York had come, and her Spanish colleague Olimpia Arias. The biographers agree that there were no other intimate relationships between them and the artist. His only great love, apart from his childhood sweetheart in Peru, which he called "Ofelia" in his letters after Shakespeare, was painting.

On January 22, 1926, the Institut français appointed him an American correspondent member. In 1928 the Peruvian government awarded him the Order of the Sun and on August 2, 1929 the French state made him Knight of the Legion of Honor . For this ceremony, Baca-Flor is riding back to Europe for the first time after his mother had died at the age of 80 a year earlier. He visited Spain and France and returned to New York in 1930, where he stayed until 1937. He traveled to Dublin for a portrait of the Prime Minister of the Republic of Ireland Éamon de Valera and afterwards retired to his house in Neuilly after several months of work in order to pursue his old project in the peace of this house, a painting for the presidential palace in Lima about creating atahualpa. A chain of illnesses prevented him from working and on February 20, 1941, he died in his house in Neuilly and was buried in the cemetery of this community. He had never returned to his home country since leaving Lima in February 1890.

plant

El rescarte de Atahualpa 1896/98

In his work from 1886 “La Vocación Natural” , which can be interpreted as a kind of self-portrait, Baca-Flor referred to his program of an artistic vocation. It shows a poorly clad in only trousers, lying on the floor and leaning on a box, who dreamily paints with a pen on a bare wall. At the same time, this work, like many later works , can be seen as a reference to Renaissance painting . Despite his early successes and awards, Baca-Flor was not certain of his ability for a long time and his work did not meet his high standards. His goal, which he finally achieved in Paris in 1907, was to become known with a bang. He mastered portraits very early on, as can be seen in the paintings from his time in Lima, but even during his stay in Rome and Paris, his endeavors were directed towards creating great historical compositions. Scenes of the Conquista or the Wars of Independence were in mind. Only the painting “ El rescarte de Atahualpa ”, today in the Museo de Arte de Lima, and a study for another Inca scenario from 1896/1900, today in the Museu de Terrassa , bear witness to these efforts. The great heroic paintings promised to the Peruvian state for the Paris World Exhibition of 1900 were never completed or were never executed. Other works were lost in transit. Neither the efforts of the artist to get a commission to paint the ceiling and foyer of the new municipal theater in Lima, nor to design a monument to commemorate the proclamation of Peru's independence by the freedom fighter José de San Martín were unsuccessful. In the salons of Paris, Baca-Flor wanted to compete with a genre painting; few such works are known, as are only a few landscapes. The artist's foray into Post-Impressionism ultimately only lasted about ten years; this ended with the project of a modernist monument of San Martin. The later success of Baca Flors was based exclusively on his extraordinary mastery of the portrait, the meticulous execution of which gave the viewer the impression of seeing the blood circulating in the veins of the person portrayed and, as it were, of being able to look inside and grasp the clothes. He once explained to his future biographer Delboy that he often looked at his model from a distance of only one meter, but wandered back and forth for kilometers between it and the easel just to capture and reproduce the true essence. Nonetheless, when asked why he did not sign his paintings, he said: “Because they are bad. In art, man is hardly a dwarf who sits up in vain and struggles to copy the truth of being. A painting is just a painting ... ”. He considered music and literature to be a better vehicle for interpretation. This downright fanatical perfectionism forbade him to deliver a picture that was not absolutely perfect in his eyes. In his portraits, Baca-Flor usually used the technique of chiaroscuro . Besides Leonardo da Vinci it was Rembrandt and Holbein the Elder. J., which he studied in detail in Europe's museums and used as a model. Stylistically, he did not want to be classified in a certain time or epoch, as he put it: "If you work for eternity, data is irrelevant". In this way the artist worked 12 to 14 hours a day and worked on each portrait for several months. Only when he was completely satisfied with it did his client see it. In addition to JP Morgan u. a.

  • Watson Bradley Dicerman, President of the New York Stock Exchange,
  • George Fisher Baker, First National Bank banker,
  • his daughter Florence Bellows Baker Loew,
  • Daniel Guggenheim , industrialist and mine owner,
  • Nicholas Frederic Brady, Director of National City Bank and other major corporations,
  • Gates White McGarrah, former director of Bankers Trust Co., chairman of the New York Federal Reserve Bank,
  • George Walbridge Perkins, Vice President of New York Life Insurance Co. and partner of JP Morgan & Co.
  • Seward Prosser, Chairman of the Board of Chase National Bank
  • Joseph Hodges Choate , Ambassador,
  • Sidney Hillman, union leader,
  • Cardinal Giovanni Bonzano ,
  • Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, later Pope Pius XII. ,
  • Éamon de Valera , Prime Minister, later President of the Republic of Ireland.

Of all the many portraits - apart from JP Morgans - none can be found in museums; they all remained in the private property of the portrayed or their heirs. No works by the artist appear in the international art trade either. Today he is largely forgotten outside his home country, whose art academy in Arequipa, the Escuela Nacional de Arte Baca Flor, has borne his name since 2012. Only the Museu de Terrassa in Catalonia and the Museo de Arte de Lima have collections of the painter, mostly drafts and sketches. The acquisition of this collection from Baca-Flor's estate formed the basis for the establishment of the Lima Art Museum, which in 2012 devoted a large special exhibition to him under the title “ Baca-Flor El último académico ”. The aim of this was to enable an impartial look at an artist swimming against the current, who continues to polarize: between hymns of praise and diatribes.

Awards

literature

Web links

Notes and individual references

  1. ↑ The often read addition of Soberon , which follows the Spanish name, indicates the mother's family name, is incorrect
  2. ↑ According to Jochamowitz, who was followed by the vast majority of literature, his year of birth was 1867. This agrees with the artist's own age statement in his application for a scholarship from June 18, 1889 to the Peruvian Minister for Justice, Culture, Instruction and Welfare at Kusunoki et.a. P. 247, and in the archive of the Congress of Peru http://www.congreso.gob.pe/Archivo/?K=4216 , likewise a newspaper report by El Comercio de Lima of April 3, 1891 p. 2, cited from Villegas Torres p. 58. According to Lavarello Vargas, who is followed by the Museo de Arte de Lima (MALI), according to the French death certificate she determined and shown in her blog, the date of birth is June 11, 1869. Canyameres, on the other hand, uses 1864 as the year of birth the year of General Belzu's death (correct would be 1865); Baca-Flor's death notice in the journal Revista Turismo from May 1941 also mentions 1864 as the year of his birth
  3. ↑ Canyameres pp. 28-30
  4. ↑ Delboy p. 9
  5. ↑ This key event is presented very vividly by his biographers and with literal quotations, but differently, so that these representations appear more legendary than historically guaranteed.
  6. ↑ Kusunoki et al. P. 218; Canyameres p. 63
  7. ↑ Delboy p. 17; Canyameres p. 65
  8. ↑ Kusunoki et al. P. 218; Canyameres p. 65; Villegas Torres S. 58
  9. ↑ Villegas Torres p. 59
  10. ↑ Delboy p. 20
  11. ↑ Jochamowitz p. 26
  12. ↑ Wuffarden p. 14
  13. ↑ Jochamowitz p. 27; Wuffarden p. 12, 38 fn. 27
  14. ↑ Jochamowitz p. 33
  15. ↑ Canyameres S. 81
  16. ↑ This museum also has a portrait of the painter Isabelle Beaubois, the 1st wife of Anglada Camarasas.
  17. ↑ Villegas Torres p. 66
  18. ↑ Francesc Fontbona, Francesc Miralles: Anglada Camarasa . Poligrafia, Barcelona 1981 fn. 252
  19. ↑ Wuffarden p. 30
  20. ↑ According to the inflation calculator https://westegg.com/inflation/ that corresponded to a value of US $ 462,052 in 2010.
  21. ↑ Jochamowitz p. 45
  22. ^ Revista Turismo de Lima, May 1941
  23. ↑ Delboy p. 35; Canyameres p. 168
  24. ↑ Delboy p. 38
  25. ↑ Jochamowitz p. 59; Delboy p. 47; Canyameres p. 197
  26. ↑ Photographs of the clay model made for this purpose are in the Museo de Arte de Lima
  27. ↑ Canyameres p. 150
  28. ↑ Delboy p. 41
  29. ↑ Delboy p. 39
  30. ↑ Canyameres S. 82
  31. ↑ Jochamowitz p. 120
  32. ↑ Wuffarden p. 37
personal data
SURNAME Baca-Flor, Carlos
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Peruvian painter
DATE OF BIRTH 1867 or 1869
PLACE OF BIRTH Islay
DATE OF DEATH February 20, 1941
Place of death Neuilly-sur-Seine , France