The Thyssen shows 34 letters from great artists of the last two centuries, together with some of their works. Géricault, Van Gogh, Frida Kahlo or Lucien Freud sign the manuscripts in the Anne-Marie Springer collection, which houses more than 2000 originals
“Don’t be sad – paint and live. I adore you with all my life.” Frida Kahlo wrote these devoted lines to her beloved Diego Rivera in January 1948. “Her absence makes me unbearable. I place your return among the sweetest wishes I can formulate,” wrote Théodore Géricault in August to his idolized Madame Trouillard in 1822. These are just a few examples of the 34 letters full of love and aesthetic judgments written by fifteen pictorial geniuses over the past two centuries, and which the Thyssen now exhibits together with some of their best works.
Letters often accompanied by sketches and drawings that reveal the intimacy and the aesthetic and vital desires of their authors. Handwritten letters from master painters that the French Anne-Marie Springer collects and which the museum exhibits until September 25, scattered in several of its rooms. They are the most valuable jewels in the collection of letters and postcards by painters such as Delacroix, Degas, Manet, Monet, Matisse, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Léger, Pisarro, Juan Gris, Egon Schiele, Frida Kahlo or Lucien Freud and those for are exhibited for the first time in Spain.
“The writing of many of these letters is as revealing as their authors’ paintings and they reveal realities we ignore,” said Thyssen’s Artistic Director Guillermo Solana and owner of the letters. “There are spectacular pieces for their content. They are letters of magnificent honesty and when they read we feel the guts of the artists”, says the owner proudly.
The letters have been selected by Clara Marcellán, curator of the exhibition and curator of modern painting at the Thyssen, who has respected the criteria that led to this unique collection, initially limited to love letters. «But there we also find the expression of ideas – which painters sometimes illustrate with small sketches –, uncertainties, the defense of their art, the celebration of triumphs, details of the creative process of a work, references to historical events and a great variety of feelings that bring us closer to the life and personality of the artists in a different way”, sums up the curator.
So we know that Delacroix finds happiness “in being content with himself,” as he writes to Josephine Forget. That Van Gogh, with careful calligraphy, already found himself beside himself when he arrived in Arles, where he felt more than happy. «The beautiful sun here, in the middle of summer. It hits you on the head and I have no doubt you’re going crazy. But as it used to be, I do nothing but enjoy it», the unstable red-haired painter wrote to Émile Bérnard in August 1888. He also describes ‘The Unloaders in Arles’, the work he painted, and next to it is your letter.
Gauguin, also with neat and clean calligraphy, wrote an aesthetic manifesto in the letter he sent from Tahiti to his friend William Molard in 1899, in response to André Fontainas’ unfavorable criticism in the ‘Mercure de Fance’. “The Thames was pure gold,” Monet describes to Alice Hoschende, his second wife in February 1901, who will share his difficulties in London and Norway. Matisse tells his wife about his travels through Morocco with numerous sketches and Juan Gris tells in his letters to Josette, his wife, the details of his work for Diaghilev’s ballets.
Special attention is paid to the letters written in wartime by Egon Schiele, Fernand Léger, Gala – Dalí’s wife and muse – or Max Pechstein. “I am assigned to the 75th Regiment, to the ‘security service’”, Egon Schiele tells his future wife Edhit Harms in June 1915. “The grenades go over my head,” Léger tells Jeanne Lohy in January. year. “Don’t walk through the woods, somewhere they can kill or capture you,” she begs Gala to her first husband, Paul Éluard, in November 1916, in the heat of World War I.
Anne-Marie Springer began collecting love letters in 1994, after the birth of her daughter “so she could leave her a legacy of words when email and texting began to threaten writing”. Currently there are more than 2,000 pieces in the collection. The oldest dates from the 15th century and the most recent from the 1970s. The first letter that caught his attention was a letter signed by a young Napoleon Bonaparte to his wife, Josephine. Then he received hundreds of letters, some as curious as one in which a mistress of Victor Hugo demanded that the writer return her panties.
In recent years, Springer has expanded his initial interest in romantic correspondence into subjects as diverse as history, literature, entertainment, music, and all the arts in general. He has focused on letters from painters in which he emphasizes “the connection between his art and his thinking”. He assures that he finds clear similarities between the painting style and calligraphy, more than evident in the case of Egon Schiele.
Source: La Verdad
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