Leopoldo Romanach

LEOPOLDO ROMANACH (Sierra Morena, Villa Clara, 1862 - Havana, 1951).
"Blessing the table".
Oil on canvas.
Signed in the lower right corner.
It presents visible restorations on the back.
Measurements: 91 x 61 cm.

Leopoldo Romanach was a Cuban painter, considered one of the great Cuban masters of the plastic arts of the 19th century. Although at the age of five he was orphaned and was taken to live in Spain, since then, his love for the Cuban landscape is clearly represented in his attempts to capture it on paper, contrary to the wishes of his father, who wanted to direct him in the world of commerce. He returns to Cuba at the age of 14 and is then sent to study in the United States to study English and commerce, but due to his artistic hobby he abandons his studies and returns to Cuba without great achievements. Then he convinces the teacher Miguel Melero, director of the San Alejandro Academy of Fine Arts to allow him to enter the Academy to take coloring classes. Upon his return to Caibarién, Francisco Ducassi encourages him to follow his vocation and gets him a scholarship at the School of Fine Arts in Rome, Italy, where he has as teachers Enrique Serra, Francisco Pradilla and Filippo Prosperi, director of the school. After graduating and returning to Cuba, he gets the position of professor of the Coloring Chair of the Academy of Fine Arts and then travels to Paris to study the new pictorial theories of impressionism, with which he changes the traditional schemes of teaching in the academy. The first stage of his work shows a marked tendency towards a pathetic conception influenced by the historical-social moment in which he develops and includes works such as: Nido de miseria, La convaleciente, La abandonada and others. In the second period, the new advances in pictorial technique, trichromy and impressionism are more marked. For his artistic work Romañach achieved numerous awards, for example, bronze medal at the "Universal Exposition of Paris", 1900; gold medal at the Exposition of St. Louis, Missouri in 1904; silver medal at the Exposition of Buffalo, 1904; gold medal in Charleston; first prize in Cuba, 1912; in Panama, 1915 and Seville in 1929. Due to all these results he was conferred the title of Member of the International Artistic Circle of Rome, member of Number of the National Academy of Arts and Letters of Cuba, the medal of Honor of the Circle of Fine Arts and the Cross of the Order of Carlos Manuel de Céspedes. For his achievements he was named Professor Emeritus of his Chair and Honorary Director of the San Alejandro National School of Fine Arts and its Annex.