Carlos González Ragel

Carlos González Ragel (December 22, 1899 - November 28, 1969) was a Spanish painter and photographer.

Early life

Born in Jerez de la Fronter on December 22, 1899 in the midst of a middle-class family. His mother had great artistic sensibility conveyed to him and their father, Diego González Lozano, owner of a famous study, initiated him into the art of photography. When he was nine years old, his mother died and his father devoted little attention to him. He was restless and rebellious. This behavior would result in him having to leave the College of the Marianists due to problems with the teachers.

At sixteen years old, he went with his brother Diego to Madrid. His heavy drinking may have begun during this time. Jerez enrolled in the School of Arts and Crafts, but did not finish his studies mainly because his style of painting did not fit the scholarship of the institution. He worked with great success in the photography studio of his father who was with his brother Javier, leading to master the technique so that, according to some in this area reached higher levels than in the painter, who is why today is almost exclusively known.

Career

However, as a painter Rachel Gonzalez boasts a creative capacity, which captured his work with a form of pictorial expression, which the author called "Esqueletomaquia" and defined as "... the art of seeing beyond what reach our eyes. " He sees living things as they are in their transitional passage on earth, but as they will take some time after buried or enclosed in a niche. It's death, in his representation of skeleton pruning. Moreover, by virtue of his strange and peculiar vision, skulls or skeletons of their "victims" have a strong physiognomic resemblance and body. It is recognized immediately. For their studies of the human body, used, no doubt, of the films included in the work of Andreas Vesalius' De Humani Fabrica Corporis "published in 1543 and which had an issue. heir skeletons represent the destination to death with a black sense of humor of its author as well as analyzing expression of a society. Rachel laughs at death and it makes her smile and harmless. His creations do not inspire terror or darken thoughts. Their dead are funny people, jocund, who have not learned yet that they no longer live or still "good health". Pablo Picasso admired his painting was an attempt to represent life and death of critically and poignant true to his nature.

Throughout his life made six exhibitions. He opened the first on February 16, 1931 with figures as skeletons in the Museum of Modern Art. At this early stage he combined his artistic qualities and pictorial photography, emphasizing drawings and caricatures of characters of all kinds, from politicians to local scenes. After the demise of his photography studio, he was devoted entirely to painting, though in a disorderly and chaotic manner, with alternating periods of high production with others of inactivity. Jose Franco said in an article published in World Chart in 1931 that Rachel Gonzalez works are full of "satirical prints" with which the author makes a critical social and human aspects of the time using "metamorphosis and deformation reality. "

The alcohol was taking its toll on him. In 1936, he first entered the Psychiatric Hospital of Malaga. After leaving travels to Seville with Amalia, his wife, which worsens their physical and mental, having to be re-admitted to the Psychiatric Hospital in Seville. In 1937 he held his third exhibition in Seville, exposing esqueleotomaquias of celebrities and politicians of the time. Back in Jerez lives in a house on the road cutting to the christening as Villa Esqueletomáquia. In this house lives with great hardship and in which it said was missing anything. There was no lack of truth and the phone, ham, cheese and the maid were painted on the wall.

In 1941 the hotel celebrated its fourth exhibition Swan with pictures similar to that of Seville, and in 1942 set out in the Hotel Palace in Madrid. From that date onwards his painting became darker, with translation of states of suffering and nightmares, similar to what happened to Goya.

Later life

In 1955 he celebrated his last exhibition in artist's life, also in the Swan Hotel. At fifty-seven years of age, he was admitted to the sanatorium of St. John of God in Ciempozuelos, where the artist spent the rest of his days. Perhaps his happiest years were spent in the sanatorium, where he felt loved and admired-everyone called him Don Carlos, well controlled and care.

This last period of his life was very productive for the artist, using the pen and the oil in his works and repeating it for very specific topics obsessively, like esqueletomaquias D. Quixote, the figure of Goya, Van Gogh esqueletomaquias, religious reasons as the "Christ of fools" and emphasizing the interpretations pictorial greatly blades Rorschach test.

On November 28, 1969 died after progressive mental and physical deterioration, sequelae of diseases acquired in his youth.

Legacy

From December 2007 to March 2008 an exhibition entitled The Spanish Night was held at the Museo Nacional Reina Sofia Modern Art. Flamenco, avant-garde and popular culture 1865-1939, a dozen of his works were displayed next to paintings by the greatest artists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.