Baldomero Romero

BALDOMERO ROMERO RESSENDI (Seville, 1922 - Madrid, 1977).
"Head of a man".
Charcoal on paper.
Signed.
Measurements: 34 x 24 cm; 51 x 42 cm (frame).
Romero Ressendi was formed in the School of Fine Arts of Santa Isabel de Hungría, in Seville, where he revealed an exceptional talent that was not understood by his teachers, who in any case noticed in his art an extravagant feeling. From his beginnings, Ressendi developed an expressionist language of baroque heritage, marked by a great technical mastery and an extraordinary facility to compose his scenes and define the physiognomies of the characters that are integrated in them, which always show gestures and moods perfectly defined and nuanced. Thus, from his earliest works, he configured a universe of forms and concepts charged with violence, threatening atmospheres derived from maudlin chromaticism and profoundly pathetic dullness. His different expressive registers oscillate from the melancholic and tragic feeling of life to a scatological and deformed vision of human beings, both physically and spiritually. Ressendi made his works known for the first time in Seville in 1946. Since then, a certain fame as a cursed and scandalous painter grew around him, his works being considered by a part of society as obscene and disrespectful to morality, as the ecclesiastical authority pointed out at the time. Fortunately, he did not lack protectors and friends who supported his art, especially counting on the protection of high military authorities who even provided him with great mural projects such as those of the Basilica of the Valley of the Fallen. Throughout his long career he worked on a wide range of subjects, including fantastic scenes, genre scenes, still lifes, portraits, bullfighting, religious, gypsy and circus themes. In 2007, the museum of Alcalá de Guadaira (Seville) dedicated an anthological exhibition to him. Ressendi's production is mainly collected in private collections, such as those of Banco Exterior in Madrid and Seville.