Sunday, February 03, 2019

An Early Indalo

The Almería Museum of Art (opposite the train station) has a small exhibition of artists from the Indaliano Movement (Wiki). These were Almería-based artists roughly spanning a time from the forties until the end of the last century. Several of them were very good - Cantón Checa and Jesús de Perceval are still remembered, as well as Castella, Abad and Visconti.
Their name comes from Saint Indalecio (Wiki), the first bishop of Almería (or 'Urci' as it was called in those times) who died a martyr in the first century.
The Indalianos are known to have baptised the little totem from Mojácar as El Indalo while installed in that village (or maybe they brought him with them?). Certainly, the figure was unknown (despite the collection of neolithic stick-figures in a cave in Vélez Blanco including one, unrevered, that looks a bit like the Mojácar totem).
But here, in an early exhibition in Madrid in 1947, we see the figure (un-named on the poster), but, notice the girl with the cántaro on her head. There's no doubt but that she's a mojaquera.


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