Esperpento

This exhibition explores the concept of “esperpento” (grotesque, deliberate distortion) as a nucleus of aesthetic thought capable of offering a new perspective to understand reality. Formulated by Ramón María del Valle-Inclán (1866–1936) as a tool of critical questioning and reacting to the backwardness and moral despair that blighted Spain in the first third of the twentieth century, esperpento confronted the country’s social, political and cultural constraints, focusing attention on a distancing of the gaze and a set of aesthetic strategies whose prime effectiveness lay in deformation.

In contrast to other cultural manifestations of the grotesque that surfaced in Spain, by which gross distortion embodied the absurdity of life in that era, esperpento offered a new aesthetic which entailed a commitment to overhauling social structures. By way of a diverse selection of documents and artworks, the show examines the main themes and strategies that articulate esperpento, highlighting how this aesthetic endeavour has outlived the time and thinking of Valle-Inclán.

Eight broad sections build the framework of the exhibition. It gets under way in the final decades of the nineteenth century with Before Esperpento, featuring a selection from the satirical press of the time, paintings and popular optical devices which foreshadowed techniques of deformation. Moving into the twentieth century, Midnight Vision explores artworks related to the reverberations of the First World War, spiritualism and altered states of consciousness which show the impact of a reality unravelling. Marionette Stage and Mardi Gras summon literary elements and forms from popular tradition to openly inform on Valle-Inclán’s discordance with the forces of power. Bohemian Light includes clear references to the time of social upheaval and decadence of bohemia, as in Valle-Inclán’s work under the same title. Tableaux, for its part, delves into the work of different artists, converging with the tales of the writer to mix religion with popular tradition and convey instincts, sins and passions. Tyrant Flags presents the embodiment of esperpento in the figure of the tyrant depicted by the writer (and who remains today): a grotesque political leader, the humiliation of a hero, where cruelty, arrogance and fear boil up. Finally, The Iberian Arena, a title which comes from Valle-Inclán’s unfinished project of novels, sees out the exhibition with a metaphor for the history of Spain as one large bull ring, in which violence, politics and spectacle unveil previous tensions that developed into the Civil War.