Manuel Salces Street

In the year 1861 was born in Suano near Reinosa, Manuel Salces. His parents are two farmers, who have two other children more and Manuel can only go to the village school in winter and part of the spring because he has to help in the field. Salces is a child who is shy, reserved, very creative and skillful to the carpentry and the stonework. And with its work also works economically in the home.

At the age of 20, is going to do the military service to Burgos, Alcala de Henares and Seville, where he spends three years. When the ends returns to Suano and known to Celedonia González, with the house. After the wedding was moved to live in Reinosa and there he met the journalist and writer D. Luis Bonafoux and Prof. Demetrio Duke and Merino who, after seeing a drawing that Manuel Salces had copied from a book, you are recommended to take classes to improve the technique. .

Salces follows the Council and he combines his work with evening classes in drawing and linear thanks to this effort, is improving, until he decided to go to the School of Arts and Crafts of Santander. The director realizes that Manuel is an adult man who already has three children and he was looking for a job as a stone-cutter so you can keep to the three children who has: Julia Ramona, Mª del Carmen and the small Federico Marcos pinter.Little by little Salces devoted himself to painting, with the support of his wife.

In 1896 a gallery of Madrid is in contact with him and sold some paintings in Madrid and in Santander. Little by little gaining admirers who encourage you to submit to exhibitions. Some of them is the exhibition in the Palace of the Arts and Industry in Madrid in the one that gets an honorable mention; another is the Academy of Fine Arts, which gives another honorable mention; in the Great Exhibition of Arts and Industries of Santander, wins the gold medal ... etc. Although he acknowledges that his work is successful, Salces is not happy because he thinks the painting of figure is valued more highly than the landscapes, which is what he likes most.

Between the years 1907 and 1911 is going to live with his family to Valladolid and there he meets another type landscape very different from that which you are accustomed. The sky of the capital of castella-león is much more luminous than the of the Cantabrian mountains and the opportunity to give more color and light to the pictures he paints in this era.

Subsequently, lives in Madrid because one realizes that it is the place where are the main artistic movements. Here also triumphs and continues to gain support, among them is the Infanta Isabel. While in the capital of Spain, his wife dies and Salces feels so sad that you don't feel like even return to his beloved people in summer. But their children insist both that, instead of going to spend their summer holidays in Suano, passes those months in Fisheries, which is near.

As curiosity we see that in 1919, King Alfonso XIII inaugurated in the Ateneo de Santander the Festival of Mountain Artists and congratulates Salces for his dominance on the landscape painting.

The health of Manuel Salces is being eroded by the rheumatism that causes swelling and pain in the feet and hands, so that each day you find it more difficult to portray.

 

Manuel Salces and Gutierrez dies in pesquera, surrounded by their children, on 1 December 1932 to 71 years.

 

Su obra:

 

Salces is a mountain landscape painter, of great realism at the beginning, and that, with the time step to be impressionistic (1912- 1932), its brighter.

In his first season, the painter Manuel Salces Gutierrez paints small oblong boxes in which we see the natural landscape in which he was born and grew up: the high Cantabria. Pint forests, hamlets, big spaces, mists ... each one is filled with an emotion and a charm that achieves with ease, security in the outline and details. Salces transforms nature in poetry colorist.

Years later will dominate the technique and puts more lights and tones, although still looking for landscapes of fog, grayish and near-continuous scatter in which the paint is not as descriptive and detailed as described above.

The box is more relevant "Turbonada" (1918) which is located in the Museo del Prado (Cas del Buen Retiro), but they can be noted as well : "Landscape in Fontibre" (1899); "a step in the forest", "In my village", "Banks of the Ebro", "Study of snow in Reinosa", "Landscape of Reinosa" (1901); "The Pines" (1905) ...

In recognition of her career as a painter cantabrian, Manuel Salces and Gutierrez, Torrelavega account with a street that bears his name and that is in the neighborhood of the Real Estate, at the northern entrance to the city.

 

Click here to go back to the main menu of this street

Bibliografía

Acero Ramos, Á. (2012). Paisajistas Campurrianos del Siglo XIX. Reinosa: Aúrea Estudio Creativo y Excmo. Ayuntamiento de Reinosa. Recuperado el 30 de Enero de 2025

Ayuntamiento de Reinosa. (s.f.). Turbonada. Recuperado el 5 de Febrero de 2025, de https://www.aytoreinosa.es/wp-content/uploads/bsk-pdf-manager/Turbonada_815.pdf

Martínez, T. P. (s.f.). Cuadernos de Campoo. Nº 27. Manuel Salces. Notas Biográficas. Recuperado el 30 de Enero de 2025, de https://www.vacarizu.es/Cuadernos/Cuaderno_27/Manuel_Salces.htm

Rodríguez Alcalde, L. (1978). Retablo Bibliográfico de Montañeses Ilustres ( Tomo II) (1ª edición ed., Vol. II). Santander: Librería Estvdio. Recuperado el 30 de Enero de 2025

 

Imagen Marcos Oria