Godofredo Ortega Muñoz (1899-1982) - Snowy Peak

Godofredo Ortega Muñoz (San Vicente de Alcántara, Badajoz, 1899 – Madrid, 1982)

Snow-capped peak

Oil on cardboard.

34 x 43 cm and 61 x 70 x 5 cm with the frame.

Good condition.

Origin:

Private collection, Massimo Uccelli, Italy. It was inherited from his grandparents, who in turn received it from the painter while he lived in his house on Via Antonio Rosmini, in Stresa, near Lake Maggiore (Italy).
Private collection, Turin.

Documentation: Certificate of the 'Fundación Ortega Muñoz', dated February 19, 2024.

Description:

Lost signature in the lower left corner: G. Ortega Muñoz.

Authenticity confirmed by the Fundación Ortega Muñoz, Badajoz 2023.

Godofredo Ortega painted this landscape during his trip to Italy, between 1921 and 1926. Precisely, his stay at Lago Maggiore, on the border between Italy and Switzerland, would prove especially significant for the young painter. There, he studied, for a short but very fruitful period, with the English painter Edgard Rowley Smart. From this unexpected teacher, Ortega learned that, in the face of the spiritual and aesthetic chaos of a contemporary world shattered after World War I, art could only regain its authenticity through spiritual truths and simple emotions, that is, by returning to nature.

Therefore, Ortega is in his twenties, focused on landscape; he explores it, studies it, paints it directly from nature, and is discovering it both formally and, especially, metaphysically. In this oil on cardboard, precisely, he expresses that wonder before the natural space, and he does so by admiring not only its grand aspects—the impressive mountains, the delicate chromatic nuances of rock and snow—but also the small and everyday things, the little trees that bloom alongside the fields, and the intensity of the green grass.

It is, therefore, a work that, at the same time, anticipates what will be Ortega's great metaphysical landscape and shows his youthful search for a language of his own, which he senses is in the land around him. In fact, this mature Ortega's preference for depicting more land than sky is already evident, although the monumentality of the Alps leads him to construct a deep, very expansive space, viewed from an appropriately elevated vantage point.

Godofredo Ortega Muñoz (San Vicente de Alcántara, Badajoz, 1899 – Madrid, 1982) began his art career as a self-taught artist; in 1919, he met the classical masters in Madrid, and a year later, he moved to Paris seeking to connect with the avant-garde. There, he befriended Gil Bel, with whom he would later form the Escuela de Vallecas. Disillusioned with the postwar Parisian art scene, Ortega embarked on a series of trips across Italy and Europe in search of new artistic languages. At Lake Maggiore, on the border between Italy and Switzerland, he discovered, along with the English painter Edgard R. Smart, a new artistic path that sought the truth of painting through a return to nature. He temporarily returned to Spain in 1926, a time when the aforementioned Escuela de Vallecas was forming, with its members sharing Ortega's interest in rural landscapes. The following year, he held his first exhibition at the Círculo Mercantil in Zaragoza. He resumed his travels across Europe that same year, and from the 1930s onward, he also traveled to Egypt and the Middle East.

By 1935, upon his return to Spain, his language had already acquired its mature characteristics: love for nature, a balance between color and mood, and that atmosphere of quietness and sadness typical of his painting. All of these make Ortega considered today as the great renovator of landscape painting in Spain, alongside Benjamín Palencia and Vázquez Díaz. After the Civil War, settled in his hometown of San Pedro de Alcántara, Ortega resumed his career successfully, exhibiting his work in Spain and other European countries, as well as in the United States. His style continued to evolve, showing influences of primitivism and Italian metaphysical painting. Ortega was awarded the Grand Prize of Painting at the Havana Hispano-American Art Biennial (1953), in 1968 a monographic hall of honor was dedicated to him at the National Fine Arts Exhibition, and in 1970 a retrospective exhibition was held at the Casón de Buen Retiro in Madrid, which marked his definitive recognition. Today, his works are preserved in the foundation that bears his name in Badajoz, as well as in the MNCARS in Madrid and the Museum of Fine Arts of Badajoz, among other collections.