Discreet modernity. Women Painters of Religious Genre in the Second Spanish Republic

Abstract

During the Second Republic, there were transformations that shook the foundations on which traditional femininity had been built, including religious piety. As a result, many women found themselves in a threshold situation between the possibilities offered by the new times and the nineteenth-century gender roles they had learned which, moreover, continued to constitute the standard in a society that was still assimilating the changes. This article analyses how women artists adapted to this reality, combining modern elements, such as dedicating themselves professionally to painting or cultivating an aesthetic typical of the avant-garde of the 1930s, with other more conservative elements, such as the repetition of religious themes in their creations. Finally, the work of Rosario de Velasco, Marisa Roësset and Julia Minguillón is analysed as an example of that art between tradition and modernity which was so successful at the time.