Mañana de Verbena o El Pim, Pam, Pum (Morning at the Fair or Pim, Pam, Pum)

Carlos Sáenz de Tejada

Tangier, Morocco, 1897 - Madrid, Spain, 1958
  • Date: 
    1924
  • Technique: 
    Oil and black chalk on canvas
  • Dimensions: 
    190 x 192 cm
  • Category: 
    Painting
  • Entry date: 
    1997
  • Register number: 
    AD00491

In 1925 Carlos Sáenz de Tejada showed a number of works at the renowned Exhibition of the Society of Iberian Artists, held that year at the Exhibition Palace of the Retiro in Madrid. Prime position among the works, which were hung alongside pieces by Salvador Dalí in the so-called Sala X, was given to Mañana de verbena o El Pim, Pam, Pum (Morning at the Fair or Pim, Pam, Pum). This is one of the paintings that best represents the artist’s period of work in the time leading up to the Civil War, a time when Tejada gave up the naturalism of his Castile and Basque Country scenes in order to apply to his works all he had learned from Cubism and the Ultraist movement. The painting’s composition is based on a soft, harmonious chromatic range using very diluted paint, even at some points allowing the canvas weave to show through. The chosen theme is the Madrid festival, which was a fairly frequent choice for some artists in the Spanish avant-garde circle in the 1920s and 1930s, such as Gabriel García Maroto, Giménez Caballero, Ponce de León, Genaro Lahuerta and, particularly, Maruja Mallo.

Paloma Esteban Leal

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