After breakfast, I made my way back to Calle Cister, took the photo I needed to get right, then went to Museo Revello de Toro. To my delight, it's free entrance for los jubilados y estudiantes, €2.50 for everyone else. An simple modest sized three storey courtyard building with a dozen salas for the exhibits, it's run by the city council.
Currently the Museum's focus is on a dozen of the artist's portraits of present day to Spanish military leaders. These are formal works, inasmuch as each wears the dress uniform of their service rank, but what's remarkable are their faces, which radiate personality and humanity in an unexpected manner Somehow, I'd expected these to be stereotypical 'men's men' images of military leadership, but found instead a diverse collection of approachable characters inhabiting their different roles.
Almost all the rest of the paintings and drawings on display, about a hundred, were of certain women family, friends, colleagues perhaps, whom he painted or drew several times over the years, exploring the way they as subject looked out towards or even beyond the painter in different moods. Unlike Picasso, I'd never heard of this other important Malaguenian artist before, and am surprised his work hasn't been discussed in a TV documentary or culture show.
He's a master craftsman of painterly techniques, in the way he delivers detail in an impressionistic manner. His drawings too are equally vivid and lifelike. There's nothing vague in his portraits, you feel as if you're meeting someone as you look. The paintings render well as photos but amazingly when you stand before them, it's a little like looking at a video, movement inferred in a superbly subtle way. This really is one of Malaga's must-see exhibitions.
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