Malaga Museum pays tribute to the artist who inspired and taught a young Picasso

Valencian, but based in Malaga most of his life, Antonio Muñoz Degrain was once Pablo Ruiz Picasso’s teacher and the driving force behind the creation of the Malaga Museum. But as well as all this, he is one of the most prolific and unclassifiable – almost eclectic – painters of the second half of the 19th century.

The Malaga Museum of Fine Arts, on the first floor of Malaga Museum, is paying tribute to him on the centenary of his death with an exhibition of some 30 paintings, a show that aims to explore his artistic career in greater depth. It also aims to highlight the fundamental role he played in the founding of the Museum of Fine Arts in 1916 through his donation of an important collection of works of art, both his own work and more from his private collection, including paintings by the young Picasso, Sorolla, Ramón Casas, Rosales and Martínez Cubell.

The exhibition, Antonio Muñoz Degrain. Ciudad del Paraíso, is divided into four thematic areas. The first deals with the maestro’s early years as an apprentice of the fine arts, including works such as Salomon the Model (El Modelo Salomón) and Portrait of Miss Abella  (Retrato de la Señorita Abella). He was pretty much self-taught apart from his time in the classrooms at the Valencian School of Fine Arts of San Carlos. This period was centred on landscape painting with very precise brushstrokes.

Throughout his life Muñoz Degrain incorporated new genres into his art style, like painting great moments from history. In the next series of paintings there are works such as Lady of Sierra Nevada (Dama de Sierra Nevada) and Washerwomen (El Lavadero). This period corresponds to the artist’s arrival in Malaga city, when he was asked by his friend Bernardo Ferrándiz to collaborate in the pictorial decoration of the ceiling over the stalls in the Cervantes Theatre in 1870.

The third series of paintings, Magisterio Nacional, includes works such as Sierra de Guadarrama and Árbol centenario (a centuries-old tree amid a landscape). This was a vital moment in the artist’s life as he left Malaga to become a teacher in Madrid, and it was there that he took up the reins to tutor a new generation of landscape painters. The fourth and last stage is Un Importante Legado Para Málaga (An Important Legacy for Malaga), a series of works in which a particular watercolour appears.

Malaga Museum

The Malaga Museum or Museo de Málaga is an impressive building close to the port which is also known as the Palacio de la Aduana, the old customs house. It houses the city’s collection of fine art on one floor, which is where this temporary exhibition is being held, as well as the archaeology museum with artifacts from Malaga’s past.

The painting The Old Man with the Blanket (El Viejo de la Manta) is the one that a young Pablo Picasso sent to this art master (and family friend) as an Easter present. This section also exhibits several sketches by the painter from 1916 when he was designing the layout of the Sala Muñoz Degrain in the fine art museum and a carving of San Pedro and San Pablo for the doors.

This commemorative exhibition has been loaned seven works from the Museo de Bellas Artes of Valencia, which was also closely linked to Muñoz Degrain, as well as loans from the Bellas Artes museum in Granada and the Carmen Thyssen Museum in Malaga, as well as one work of art from a private collection.

Muñoz Degrain and Malaga

It was Bernardo Ferrándiz’s call to Muñoz Degrain to come to Malaga that brought the artist here, and then they won the competition to decorate the Cervantes Theatre ceiling. The success achieved with this work opened the door for Muñoz Degrain to join the teaching staff of the then Escuela de Bellas Artes de San Telmo as a lecturer in 1879, while Bernardo Ferrándiz was director.

The painter’s presence in the city was reinforced by his marriage in 1872 to Malaga-born Dolores Sánchez and the birth of their only son. Muñoz Degrain was buried in San Miguel cemetery in October 1924.

This temporary exhibition is on until 3 December and reflects on the painter’s life in Malaga as well as his training and professional development in fine art, his numerous travels, his time in Madrid and his return to Malaga city after his retirement.