Álvaro Vega I Córdoba, Jul 16 (EFE) figure is eclipsed by that of his father, Enrique Romero Barros, and that of his brother, the painter Julio Romero de Torres.
This was explained to EFE by Victoria Fernández de Molina, a graduate in History from the University of Córdoba, who the art gallery itself has commissioned to lead the guided tours of the exhibition ‘Enrique Romero de Torres. A Museum Life’, which delves into the historical figure and professional work of the second of the Romero de Torres brothers, the first to be born in Córdoba.
Fernández de Molina has guided the first of the visits to the exhibition this Sunday for about ninety minutes that has ended with expressions of astonishment when discovering the profile of who for her was “a great ambassador of Córdoba, a great patron and a guide” and with whom “Córdoba has a perpetual debt to him because he marked a before and after in the history of the city.”
The Museum of Fine Arts of Córdoba intends with this exhibition, which extends the photographic work that in 2006, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of his death, dedicated to him together with the publication of a book on his life, and with the guided tours that will resume after summer, is “getting to know more thoroughly and better an illustrious figure and a pure-blooded Cordovan who watched over Córdoba.”
Between medieval and modern
The stamp of Enrique Romero de Torres is in the current Fine Arts with the transformation of a crowded building inherited from an old Franciscan Hospital de la Caridad, when he took over as curator on the death of his father in 1895, but also in a multiplicity of performances that last in Córdoba.
As Victoria Fernández de Molina explained to the visitors, it was practically debated between the Middle Ages, with nine kilometers of wall of which meager testimonies remain, and addressing the modernity of the beginning of the first half of the 20th century and even turning into what Today it is the physiognomy of Fine Arts, Enrique Romero de Torres had to remove the archaeological museum, the music conservatory, the academy and the school of fine arts from the old hospital.
From him came the collections of Ángel Avilés (1922), Matero Inurria (1940-1943), that of his brother Julio (1930) and that of his father, the first director of the museum (1938), and the original cover was discovered of the building, the work of Hernán Ruiz I, the same author of the Renaissance part of the Giralda in Seville.
“He understood culture in a broad, very complete sense, which is why it led him to become a documentary maker and to immerse himself diligently and passionately in the Cordovan archives”, Fernández de Molina specified.
In fact, it is to this Romero de Torres that we owe the discovery of the birth certificate of Juan Valdés Leal, a native of Seville and not Córdoba, as it was previously erroneously attributed, or the conservation of the Synagogue, one of the five of the historical ones that are conserved in Spain, and of the Arab baths of Carlos Rubio and Pescadería, decades later still without value.
Advanced of the great exhibitions
Romero de Torres was a pioneer in large exhibitions, such as the ones he presented by the Córdoba City Council in 1916 on Valdés Leal or in 1924 on guadameciles, both with careful catalogs that are exhibited in this exhibition that will be open until February 4 , and accompanied by conferences, such as the one given by the historian, intellectual and later constituent deputy of the Second Republic, Antonio Jaén Morente.
Together with the catalog of the guadameciles exhibition, the exhibition presents the response of the director of the Madrid newspaper ‘La Correspondencia de España’ acknowledging receipt of the copy and agreeing to give a glowing review of it, with reference to the mayor
This last detail is related to the quality of Enrique Romero de Torres, his extraordinary personal relationships, which he began to cement in Madrid, a city that he left after the death of his father to take charge of the conservation of the then only museum in Córdoba.
In the exhibition there are photos dedicated to him from the future queen of Spain Isabel II or Vicente Blasco Ibáñez or in which he appears with Menéndez Pidal, Niceto Alcalá-Zamora as president of the Second Republic when he inaugurated the museum dedicated to his brother, or with Carmen Polo, wife of Francisco Franco when he was head of state. EFE