In all the narrative painting of Daniel de Campos, since he painted at the age of 18 the wonderful and spectacular historical painting “The Battle of Tetouan” – our Nieva argued in his “Salvator Rosa” that the great battles were fought precisely to be painted by the … great painters – there is a clear aesthetic goal, as the transcendent goal of their genius, their wisdom, their palette, their brushes and their talent, that of giving dignity to human life. In all his narrative paintings there is an intention of intellectual and moral restoration of the matter represented. It is for this reason that in the paintings of this great Spanish painter, emotional expression always arises from the story as an intensification of the human, of the always exciting dignity of man. From General Prim to the most anonymous and smallest human being from the point of view of the dehumanizing gaze of this society, the sacred dignity of the human always beats in his paintings. In a recent exhibition at the prestigious Casa de Vacas, De Campos displayed a collection of bandit paintings from the Romantic era.
The bandit has always been one of our most beloved romantic heroes; the same here as in Pushkin’s romantic Russia, with Emelian Pugachev for example. The romantic hero, who was never exactly defined, was the man who dared to think, feel, and live his life outside of, and even against, social norms. He’s the hero who essentially goes too far. How can the bandit not be a romantic hero? And there has always been in great art a tendency to excuse a certain type of immoral or criminal being when precisely social norms are based on inequity, injustice and the most indecent immorality. It is one of the golden glory of art. Our literature and especially French literature have made our mountain bandits a sort of modern knights-errant.
English painters came to see our José María el Tempranillo, the bandit from the Andalusian bush, present in one of the paintings in this magnificent collection to represent him at the risk of their lives. The people also adored Luis Candelas, the salty crook from Madrid, who ended his life, despite popular sympathy, by hanging. The bandit Diego Corrientes was another popular hero of the end of the 18th century, at the very beginning of romanticism, and he starred in the beautiful zarzuelas of José María Gutiérrez de Alba and Enrique Zumel, or in the serial novels of Manuel Fernández González. And what ordinary language, philosophical or political, cannot say about bandits, can be represented by art. This is the virtue of its expressive constitution of aesthetic emotions. To deny it would be equivalent to imposing silence on painting, which is impossible. We could cite other heroic bandits, such as the boatman of Cantillana, Bizco de Borge, Pernales or Joaquín Camargo López, Vivillo.
A gentle expressionism marks the multiple figures and landscapes of these large paintings. Sometimes the landscape is methodically broken and disfigured without ever achieving abstraction. In these landscapes, Daniel de Campos wants to see and express new aspects of reality, that no one has taught him. Careful historical and ethnographic study of the era also reveals the picture. His previous collection of paintings about our War of Independence provided Daniel de Campos with almost unparalleled knowledge of this period. Death or its proximity is present in all of these impressive paintings. Death, the essential wife of the legionnaire and the revolutionary, is also the wife of the bandit. The fight for the desired woman between two bandits, already armed with two “deadly” facas from Albacete, portends a tragedy of copious blood and probable death, with the men preventing the women from intervening to end the mortal fight. A bandit about to be garroted, sitting on the scaffold, awaits death which lies behind, in a ghostly hooded executioner showing various instruments of execution. Heartbroken Manolas, pistols at their belts, bend down screaming like maenads to kiss the lifeless bodies of their adventurous lovers. A group of bandits assist an injured companion and it appears they are trying to transfer him to the Queen’s chair. Five bandits stop a Collaras car without knowing that several soldiers from the Kingdom’s General Police are waiting for them in ambush.
At the wedding of a bandit and a bride with garlands, a group of people of different sexes dance happily and crotalote with their own fingers. Several bandits and a woman form a wake in which the dead man appears to be lying on an alpaca. A large crucifix in the background gives hope of transcendence. A Spanish bandit of the time was a good Catholic.
In another painting, a group of five women, with the spiritual consolation of a priest, cry and embrace inconsolably before the bandit lying on the ground, recently dead and whose right hand still holds his blunderbuss. Five bandits and a young woman appear to be posing relaxed next to the entrance to their lair. Perhaps they are posing one of those English painters fascinated by Spain? Three women kneeling crying and an armed man standing with his head bowed seem to accompany the bearded dead man lying on the ground. A bandit with his people enters his house to hold his dead wife in his arms.
Art expresses pleasure, but not cordiality with the social environment of the world. Among the magnificent landscapes of the Banditry Mountains, the spectacular and dazzling Tajo de Ronda stands out, the capital of this romantic Spain so obviously loved and praised by geniuses like Henri Beyle Stendhal or Próspero Mérimée. In short, we find ourselves here in a haven of beauty, intelligence and creative honesty. This is not the art of pseudo-democracies and art demagogues, this art based on the wonderful aesthetic equality of abstraction, in which everyone can create and enjoy, and no one understands. Daniel de Campos already belongs to Spanish high culture.
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