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The arrival of the 20th century and its avant-garde eclipsed many of the great artists that preceded it. To such an extent that art history has had to make an exercise of historical archeology to recover some of the most prestigious painters of the 19th century. They were the masters of the great exhibitions, the salons and a booming international market. In their day they won the whole world, but later posterity did not treat them so well.
Considering that they had already been rewarded in life, history relegated many of these virtuosos of painting to a lesser consideration than their experimental successors. Great artists such as Antonio Gisbert, Francisco Pradilla or Joaquín Sorolla himself occupied a secondary place until the vindication of their legacy arrived. To this group also belonged Ulpiano Checa, one of the most internationally sought-after artists of his generation and whose legacy was practically forgotten after his death.
"He had the misfortune of dying in France in the middle of World War I and his death was overshadowed by historical circumstances. In the end, he was a painter who in France was Spanish and in Spain he was considered French. He also did not ascribe to any pictorial current and, together with the fact that at that time there were all the emerging trends: impressionism, post-impressionism, the beginning of cubism...; his legacy ended up being lost", explains Angel Benito, director of the Ulpiano Checa Museum (MUCH), in statements to El Independiente.
This humble but remarkable museum, located in his native Colmenar de Oreja, has set itself the mission of recovering the prestige and recognition of its most illustrious artist. A town located southeast of Madrid that, when Checa was born in the mid-19th century, had barely five thousand inhabitants. At that time, the painter had to emigrate to grow up. First to the Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, sponsored by José Ballester, husband of a neighbor of Colmenar, who ran the Café de la Concepción, in the Corredera Baja in Madrid. There he quickly excelled and obtained a scholarship to go to Rome in 1884 to learn from...