María del Carmen Laffón de la Escosura (8 October 1934 – 7 November 2021) was a Spanish figurative painter and sculptor. She was a member of the
Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando
The Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando (RABASF; ), located on the Calle de Alcalá in the heart of Madrid, currently functions as a museum and gallery. A public law corporation, it is integrated together with other Spanish royal acad ...
from 1998 until her death, and received numerous awards and honours, such as the
Grand Cross of the Civil Order of Alfonso X, the Wise in 2017.
Biography
Carmen Laffón was born in
Seville
Seville (; es, Sevilla, ) is the capital and largest city of the Spanish autonomous community of Andalusia and the province of Seville. It is situated on the lower reaches of the River Guadalquivir, in the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula ...
in 1934, into a cultured, progressive, and well-off family. Her parents, who had met at the
Residencia de Estudiantes
The Residencia de Estudiantes, literally the "Student Residence", is a centre of Spanish cultural life in Madrid. The Residence was founded to provide accommodation for students along the lines of classic colleges at Bologna, Salamanca, Cambridge ...
in Madrid, decided not to send her to school. Her education took place in their home, where various teachers visited.
Her introduction to painting took place at age 12 under the guidance of , a friend of the family and her father's former drawing teacher. At his recommendation she entered the School of Fine Arts in Seville at age 15. After studying at this institution for three years, she moved to Madrid, where she finished her training at the
Real Academia de Bellas Artes. In 1954, she made her final study trip to Paris, where she was especially impressed by the work of
Marc Chagall
Marc Chagall; russian: link=no, Марк Заха́рович Шага́л ; be, Марк Захаравіч Шагал . (born Moishe Shagal; 28 March 1985) was a Russian-French artist. An early modernism, modernist, he was associated with se ...
. The following year she had a study residency in Rome with a grant from the Ministry of Education. Her trips to Vienna and the Netherlands were also important milestones in those years.
On her return to Seville in 1956, she continued painting at the family summer house in La Jara, facing
Doñana National Park
Doñana National Park or Parque Nacional y Natural de Doñana is a natural reserve in Andalucía, southern Spain, in the provinces of Huelva (most of its territory), Cádiz and Seville. It covers , of which are a protected area. The park is an ...
, which would end up being the center of her artistic activity. In the next two years she held her first two solo exhibitions, one at the
Ateneo de Madrid
The Ateneo de Madrid ("Athenæum of Madrid") is a private cultural institution located in the capital of Spain that was founded in 1835. Its full name is ''Ateneo Científico, Literario y Artístico de Madrid'' ("Scientific, Literary and Artistic ...
and the other at the Club La Rábida in Seville. From 1960 to 1962 she lived in Madrid. In 1961 she met
Juana Mordó
Juana Mordó (April 26, 1899 – March 12, 1984) was born in Thessaloniki, Greece and was an art dealer and gallery director in Madrid, Spain.
Early years
Juana Naar Scialom was born in Salonica, Greece on April 26, 1899. Daughter of Elise S ...
, who was keenly interested in her work and offered her a contract with the . The relationship with Mordó would continue later when she set up her own gallery. The group of artists working for Mordó included many of the most prominent names in Spanish painting of the time:
Manolo Millares
Manolo Millares (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Canary Islands, 17 January 1926 – Madrid, 14 August 1972) was a Spanish painter.
Biography
Self-taught as an artist, Millares was introduced to Surrealism in 1948. In 1953, he moved to Madri ...
,
Antonio Saura
Antonio Saura Atarés (September 22, 1930 – July 22, 1998) was a Spanish artist and writer, one of the major post-war painters to emerge in Spain in the fifties whose work has marked several generations of artists and whose critical voice is ...
, José Luis Mauri,
Lucio Muñoz,
Eusebio Sempere
Eusebio Sempere Juan (3 April 192310 April 1985) was a Spanish sculptor, painter and graphic artist whose abstract geometric works make him the most representative artist of the Kinetic art movement in Spain and one of Spain's foremost artists. ...
, ,
Pablo Palazuelo
Pablo Palazuelo (October 8, 1915 – October 3, 2007) was a Spanish painter and sculptor.
Work and biography
Pabich led to an invitation to join the Galérie Maeght (currently Galérie Lelong), an association that has continued for some f ...
, ,
Fernando Zóbel, and
Antonio López. Carmen Laffón's painting style was enormously different from the abstraction that prevailed in the creative circles of Spain at that time, in which Mordó's artists had a preponderant position.
In 1962 she returned to Seville but continued her relationship with Juana Mordó. With the creation of the school El Taller in 1967, together with and José Soto, Carmen Laffón approached the world of artistic education, to which she would return years later when she joined the School of Fine Arts of Seville's Chair of Natural Drawing in 1975, where she would remain until 1981.
In 1982 she received the
National Award for Plastic Arts.
In 1998, she was named an academic of the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid. On 16 January 2000, she gave its entrance speech entitled ''Visión de un paisaje'' (Vision of a Landscape), which dealt with her relationship with
Sanlúcar de Barrameda
Sanlúcar de Barrameda (), or simply Sanlúcar, is a city in the northwest of Cádiz province, part of the autonomous community of Andalucía in southern Spain. Sanlúcar is located on the left bank at the mouth of the Guadalquivir River oppos ...
and Doñana National Park.
In 2006 she exhibited her work ''La Viña'' in the crypt of the cloister of the
Silos Abbey
Santo Domingo de Silos Abbey ( es, Abadía del Monasterio de Santo Domingo de Silos) is a Benedictine monastery in the village of Santo Domingo de Silos in the southern part of Burgos Province in northern Spain. The monastery is named after the e ...
, inspired by the vineyard that she cares for like a garden at her residence in La Jara. This exhibition consisted of an oil painting paying homage to Santo Domingo, large-format drawings on the landscape of the Santa Adela vineyard in La Jara, and others around the theme of the vineyard and the vintage, as well as a plaster sculpture, later acquired by the
Museo Reina Sofía Museo may refer to:
* Museo, 2018 Mexican drama heist film
*Museo (Naples Metro)
Museo is a station on line 1 of the Naples Metro. It was opened on 5 April 2001 as the eastern terminus of the section of the line between Vanvitelli and Museo. ...
, and 18 baskets of bronze in clear reference to the tasks of the grape harvest.
Laffón died on the morning of 7 November 2021, at the age of 87.
Works
In 1992, an exhaustive retrospective exhibition of Laffón's work took place at the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid, covering almost the entirety of her artistic career. Her work, made mainly with the techniques of charcoal, pastel, and oil, includes portraits (including two of
King Juan Carlos
King is the title given to a male monarch in a variety of contexts. The female equivalent is queen, which title is also given to the consort of a king.
*In the context of prehistory, antiquity and contemporary indigenous peoples, the ti ...
and
Queen Sofía
Queen or QUEEN may refer to:
Monarchy
* Queen regnant, a female monarch of a Kingdom
** List of queens regnant
* Queen consort, the wife of a reigning king
* Queen dowager, the widow of a king
* Queen mother, a queen dowager who is the mother ...
),
still life
A still life (plural: still lifes) is a work of art depicting mostly wikt:inanimate, inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which are either natural (food, flowers, dead animals, plants, rocks, shells, etc.) or artificiality, m ...
s, everyday objects, and especially landscapes. Since the mid-90s, Laffón has also worked in sculpture.
[
]
Museums with works by Carmen Laffón
* Fundación Mapfre
* Bank of Spain
The Bank of Spain ( es, link=no, Banco de España) is the central bank of Spain. Established in Madrid in 1782 by Charles III of Spain, Charles III, today the bank is a member of the European System of Central Banks and is also Spain's national ...
Collection
* Bank of Santander Collection
* Museo de Arte Abstracto Español
The ''Museo de Arte Abstracto Español'' (Museum of Spanish Abstract Art) is a museum in Cuenca, Spain established in 1966. It has a collection of some 129 paintings, mainly by 1950s and 1960s Spanish artists.
History
In 1961 artist Fernando ...
* 20th Century Art Collection, Eusebio Sempere donation, Alicante
Alicante ( ca-valencia, Alacant) is a city and municipality in the Valencian Community, Spain. It is the capital of the province of Alicante and a historic Mediterranean port. The population of the city was 337,482 , the second-largest in t ...
* Fundación Juan March
The Fundación Juan March is a foundation established in 1955 by Juan March, who was Spain's richest man. The foundation produces exhibitions as well as concert and lecture series. Its headquarters in Madrid houses a library devoted to contempora ...
* Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...
, New York
* Meadows Museum
The Meadows Museum, nicknamed "Prado on the Prairie", is a two-story, 66,000 sq. ft.art museum in Dallas, Texas on the campus of Southern Methodist University (SMU). Operating as a division of SMU's Meadows School of the Arts, the museum houses one ...
, Dallas
* Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía
* Fundación Aena
* Caja de Burgos
* Fundación Casa de la Moneda, Madrid
* Collections (MUICO), Madrid
*
* Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Seville
Expositions
* Ateneo de Madrid
The Ateneo de Madrid ("Athenæum of Madrid") is a private cultural institution located in the capital of Spain that was founded in 1835. Its full name is ''Ateneo Científico, Literario y Artístico de Madrid'' ("Scientific, Literary and Artistic ...
, 1957[
* Sala Biosca, Madrid, 1961
* Galería La Pasarela, Seville, 1966
* Galería Juana Mordó, Madrid, 1967
* Juana de Aizpuru Gallery, Seville, 1978
* Galería Maese Nicolás, León, 1980
* Museo Nacional Reina Sofía, 1992
* retrospective exposition, 1995
* Museo Casa de la Moneda, 2000
* 12 Artists in the ]Museo del Prado
The Prado Museum ( ; ), officially known as Museo Nacional del Prado, is the main Spanish national art museum, located in central Madrid. It is widely considered to house one of the world's finest collections of European art, dating from the ...
, May–June 2007
Awards and recognitions
* National Award for Plastic Arts, 1982[
* , 1988
* Gold Medal of Merit in the Fine Arts, 1999
* Tomás Francisco Prieto Award, 1999
* Culture Award of the Community of Madrid, 2012
* Favorite Daughter of Andalusia, 2013
* Manuel Clavero Award, 2016
* Grand Cross of the Civil Order of Alfonso X, the Wise, 2017]
References
External links
*
Visión de un paisaje
' at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando
The Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando (RABASF; ), located on the Calle de Alcalá in the heart of Madrid, currently functions as a museum and gallery. A public law corporation, it is integrated together with other Spanish royal acad ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Laffon, Carmen
1934 births
2021 deaths
20th-century Spanish women artists
21st-century Spanish women artists
20th-century Spanish painters
20th-century Spanish sculptors
21st-century Spanish painters
21st-century Spanish sculptors
Painters from Andalusia
Painters from Seville
Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando alumni
Recipients of the Civil Order of Alfonso X, the Wise
Spanish women painters
Spanish women sculptors