From Spain to Virginia The Life and Times of Pierre Daura - Catalog - Page 21
Portraits: Up Close and Personal
Near the entrance to the exhibition are two striking images
of the artist recording his own visage. Daura, Olive
Shirt from the 1960s shows a contemplative and mature
Daura in his sixties, staring out of the canvas toward the
painting’s viewer. It is a lyrical composition largely made
up of repetitive daubs of white and yellow paint that are
intermingled with brushstrokes of pink and gold pigment.
Amidst this field of lighter tones, the artist’s penetrating
hazel-gray eyes are complemented by the eponymous
olive-greens of the artist’s shirt and the bluish-purples of his
collar scarf. In contrast, the self-portrait entitled Guerrilla
of 1938, on loan from the University of Lynchburg, is a
striking declaration of the artist’s Republican allegiances as
he fought with the Popular Front forces in the Spanish Civil
War in 1937.
The Spanish Civil War is frequently viewed as a preamble
to the Second World War — but with conservative,
authoritarian, fascist, monarchical, and other rightwing forces achieving victory in 1939, an outcome that
established dictatorial rule in Spain under the leadership of
General Francisco Franco, which was sustained until his
death in 1975. Daura left his family in Saint-Cirq-Lapopie
in 1937, compelled to fight for what in the Western popular
imagination has often been characterized as the great lost
cause for Republican and democratic values. Daura’s
passionate political loyalties to the republican cause were
no doubt tightly bound up with his roots in Catalonia, a
province that enjoyed some greater degree of independence
and advancement toward self-governance under Republican
Spain – accomplishments that were destroyed by the war
and the resulting centralized nationalist power.
Daura’s self-portrait Guerilla depicts a visage dressed in
the regalia of an artist-soldier, featuring dark browns and
bluish greys of the disheveled garments intermixed with
ruddy reds and golden creams particularly evident in the
figure’s parted lips and layered scarves. Daura portrays
himself unshaven, with the grey-and-white facial stubble
of a mature combatant. The portrait conveys a romantic
and revolutionary fervor that became synonymous with
Republican causes affiliated with opposition to right-wing
Daura, Olive Shirt (detail), 1960-1969, Oil on canvas, Taubman Museum of Art, Gift of Martha Randolph Daura, 2003.025
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