Spanish school of the 20th century

Spanish school of the 20th century.
"Children with chicken".
Oil on canvas.
Measurements: 66 x 52 cm; 94 x 82 cm (frame).

The theme of this painting (two children arranging a hen in a cloth) links this work with one of the main pictorial trends in Spain in the nineteenth century as is the costumbrismo. Traditionally, Spanish painting and literature have been interested in popular customs and types. The arrival of romanticism enlivened this current, bringing to the Hispanic tradition the vision that foreigners had of our people, due to the snobbery of a Europeanizing and liberal national bourgeoisie that, also by foreign influence and under the romantic fashion, turns its eyes to the people and the monuments of the past. This, general in all Spain, will be preferably in Andalusia, for being this land the dreamed goal of foreigners, and where the influence of the vision they had of the Spaniard and his peculiar customs had to be felt more strongly. Thus, of the two fundamental costumbrista schools, the Andalusian school is focused on a friendly and folkloric picturesqueness, far from any attempt at social criticism; on the other hand, the Madrilenian school is more pungent and harsh, sometimes showing not only the vulgar, but even recreating itself in torn visions of a clichéd world of the slums, in which the spirit of criticism is evident.