José Luis Picón I Málaga, (EFE).- The Malaga painter Antonio Montiel hopes that the portrait of Federico García Lorca that he has painted for the Illustrious Gallery of the Madrid Ateneo, which is presented this Wednesday, can become “an icon”. of the poet from Granada.
Montiel explained in an interview with EFE that the creation of this portrait coincides with the celebration this year of the 125th anniversary of García Lorca.
“The Ateneo de Madrid has in its Gallery of Illustrious the great poets and writers of history who were part of the institution, but Federico was missing, who in his last years had a lot to do with the Ateneo and went there a lot”, adds the artist.
The initiative came from Madrid Pride (Mado), which decided to donate the work to the Madrid Ateneo and commissioned it from Montiel.
A novel image
“I had the difficulty that I wanted to do something that had a novel point, that was not exactly copying a photo. There are many photos of Lorca in which he is at different times, but they are very poor quality photos, and there are three or four photos that are the ones that are known, from a youthful period and that are already widely seen ”, he specifies.
For this reason, he has chosen to create a “composition” from different images that he has had to go through with color oil, given the lack of color photographs of Federico, and has used a live model to make a combination in the posture , lights and shadows.
The poet in his thirties
“The work is already in the Ateneo, they liked it and they tell me that it seems as if Federico had posed,” says Montiel, who has captured a Lorca already in his thirties, “when he went to the Ateneo shortly before his death.”
Now it will join that Gallery of Illustrious of the Ateneo, which had among its latest additions that of the writer Almudena Grandes on the first anniversary of her death.
“It means a lot to me that my portrait remains there, because many of the portraits of great writers and poets that we see in school or history textbooks have the originals in the Ateneo, and that made me very excited”, he highlights. Montiel.
He also hopes that it can “become an icon, because the best known of Lorca in oil is the one made by Gregorio Prieto in his youth, which is a bit stylized, so that it is almost more of an idealized figure.”
A serious and austere Federico
He has depicted Federico “in a serious and austere way, even with a certain touch of melancholy and sadness”, points out the painter, who has previously documented himself and has asked experts about “the color of his eyes and his skin, to to be as accurate as possible.”
He reveals that, even before this job, he was very Lorca, and that when he was studying at the School of Arts and Crafts in Malaga at the age of 17, he directed the play “Doña Rosita la soltera”. “I had seen it in Madrid by Nuria Espert and I was so excited that I wanted to direct it”, he adds.
The presentation of the work at the Ateneo will have the participation of Ana Belén, Roberto Enríquez, David San José, Aaron Lee, David González and Elvira Sastre, in an act that will be conducted by Boris Izaguirre.
During his career, Antonio Montiel has portrayed personalities such as King Juan Carlos I and Felipe VI, Queen Sofia and Elizabeth II of England, Fidel Castro, Montserrat Caballé, Alicia Alonso, Carmen Thyssen and former US First Lady Barbara Bush. EFE