Mariano Bertuchi as a Painter of Moroccan Privacy

Abstract

This article aims to recover the figure of the artist from Granada Mariano Bertuchi Nieto (1884-1955), one of the decisive painters in the construction of images in the africanist context of the first half of the twentieth century. Considered by antonomasia “the official painter of the spanish Protectorate in Morocco”, would have to materialize his communicative project in a comprehensive way through various expressive supports: tourism posters, series of stamps, postcards, illustrations for magazines and books, and, strictly speaking, pictorial works. Far from focusing on the officialist painting made by the artist, this article addressed his more intimate plastic communications. In the analysis carried out, one investigates the possible connections between the colonial literature of the time and a selection of the Bertuchi ́s production developed across the Forties.