Ángeles Santos Torroella
Wonderful Female Painters
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Ángeles Santos Torroella (1911-2013)
A World (1929)
When Ángeles Santos exhibited her first paintings, people were surprised. There was certain technical clumsiness; her paintings were unrealistic; the color was not harmonious. They were the paintings of someone “who does not know how to paint.”
Nevertheless, those innocent works —as all the works of naive art— have the strength of spontaneity; they have a huge expressive power, are free from influences, prejudices, tricks to try to please the audience. Works that escape from reality to take refuge in fantasy worlds, dreamt worlds, Surrealist universes. After the first impact these works ended being original, exquisite.
Ángeles was 16 years old. She was the “naif” girl who painted naturally with innocence. As she was so young, many called her simply Angelita.
Young prodigy, promise of the Spanish and universal painting, Ángeles decided to paint A World —the painting we have chosen— which is finally her masterpiece, in a canvas of huge dimensions (about 3m x 3m). When her father got the canvas, he put it on the wall of the house for the girl to paint it. She was 18 years old and intended to “paint everything she had seen.” A monumental task.
Angelita’s world is a “cubic planet” next to a strange stair. Some women play music and other ones climb to the sun to take fire and illuminate the stairs. There are also angels that take the souls of the cemetery to Heaven. Or, as the artist said: “…to Heaven or maybe to other worlds.”
One of the faces of the strange planet represents Valladolid, the city of the painter, and the other faces represent places where she had been. We always say that art takes place when an artist creates a new version of the universe. The version of Ángeles is the magical world of her childhood. The wonderful universe she saw as a girl.
That allows us to enjoy a work of art of pure creativity, where “intellectualization” has not intervened. We can verify this when years later the artist talked about her work. We have chosen a phrase that destroys any kind of sophisticated interpretation: “Instead of representing the round earth I did it square, in planes, because I had read about Cubism and it was easier to place things.”
Recommended links:
Ángeles Santos Torroella, the Young Lady who Astonished the World of the Avant-garde.
Wonderful Female Painters: Grandma Moses.
Wonderful Female Painters: Leonora Carrington.
Wonderful Female Painters: Remedios Varo.
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