Painting By Maroussia Valero (st. Petersburg 1885 – Madrid 1955), “portrait Of A Woman”

Maroussia Valero (St. Petersburg 1885 – Madrid 1955), “Portrait of a Woman”.

Oil on canvas, cm. 60 x 50

Signed “Maroussia Valero 1918” lower right.

The painting depicts a woman in three-quarters; we are not allowed to know her identity but we know that by the end of the 1910s Valero was already a highly regarded portraitist. The figure is depicted here hunched and distraught; she does not look at the observer, indeed, a strong tension can be identified in the clenched jaw, outlined by a strong shadow that gives it a geometric, almost square shape. The eyes seem red and swollen from crying. The disheveled hair is gathered at the nape of the neck in a rough chignon, which accentuates the restlessness of the figure. Valero, playing with broad brush strokes and livid tones, perfectly renders the gaze and gestures of a person contrite with pain.

BIOGRAPHY

Maroussia or Marusa Valero Kotowitch was born in St. Petersburg in 1885 to Fernando Valero y Toledano (1856 –1914), a famous Spanish tenor, and soprano Raia Kotowitch, a Russian aristocrat. The family lived in Russia when they were not on tour; in the following years, her sister Raia, who would also become an opera singer, and her brother Fernando, who later became a sculptor, were born. Daughter of an artist, she began her studies in St. Petersburg, with the Polish artist Zionglisky. Later, she enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, a student of the painter Cesare Tallone (1853 -1919). Her first exhibition took place in 1909, at the Casa de Música de Maristany in Barcelona; she had in fact moved to her father's hometown to study the great Spanish masters at the Museo del Prado. In 1918 he participated in the Annual Exhibition at the Society for Fine Arts and Permanent Exhibition of Brera with the painting Portrait of Viglione Borghese. In 1921 he moved to Paris and received an honorable mention at the Salon des Artistes Français, holding a personal exhibition at the S.F.A.I. in May of the following year, becoming famous as a portraitist of Parisian high society.

In 1925 he exhibited individually at the Salon Easo in Madrid, in 1926 at the Salon of Modern Art of the Palace of Libraries and Museums and in 1929 a group of eighty-six works at the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid. He founded and directed his own school and participated in the Exposición de Pintores Españoles organized by the newspaper Heraldo de Madrid, where his colleagues included María de los Ángeles López Roberts and Marisa Roesset.

In 1932 he moved to Los Angeles where his sister lived, and there he exhibited at the Assistance League of Southern California: his paintings depicted gypsies, flamenco artists and portraits of famous Hollywood personalities. In 1934 he returned to Madrid and among his paintings stands out a portrait of the artist Manuel de Falla with whom he participated in the National Exhibition of Fine Arts and two years later, in the same exhibition, he presented a nude. During the war he held an exhibition in the rooms of the Hotel Palace in Madrid and in 1942 he exhibited at the Pallarés gallery in Barcelona. He died prematurely in 1955 in his home in Madrid.