Dancer Antonia Mercé known as La Argentina

Max Slevogt is one of the most brilliant representatives of German Impressionism. Paintings related to music form an important chapter in the oeuvre of this artist. Slevogt, fascinated with theatre, opera and dance, created not only paintings, drawings and graphic works, but was also involved in the preparation of set design projects and stage costumes. The fascination with dance is clearly legible in the painter’s early work of 1895, the famous “Dance Triptych: “Dancer in Gold, Dancer in Silver and Dancer in Green.” On a number of occasions, Slevogt portrayed excellent artists of the epoch, among others Mariette di Ricardo from the Philippines, performing in Berlin’s “Seventh Heaven” cabaret, Japanese artist Sada Yakko who visited Berlin during her European tour, as well as Tilla Durieux, the wife of Paul Cassirer, Anna Pavlova and Jeanne Rachel. The model for the Szczecin painting is Antonia Mercé known as La Argentina (1890-1936). She started to study dance under the supervision of her father, Manuel Mercé ˗ a ballet master in Madrid Teatro Real and later, after his death, she took lessons from her mother Josefa Lugue, a Madrid principal dancer. She made her début at the age of nine in the opera in Madrid; in 1905, she danced successfully in Teatro Ateneo in Madrid and in 1910, the Paris audience saw her in Moulin Rouge and Olympia. In 1915, Mercé prepared the set design for the ballet “The Bewitched Love” by Manuel de Falla. Upon the request of Enrique Grandosa, she danced in New York in his “Goyescas.” After the war, she cooperated with Federik Garcia Lorca, Mauric Ravel and Isaak Albénize. Shortly before her death, Mercé danced in the Parisian Comic Opera in relation to Paul Valéry's lecture. In the stage image of La Argentina that was created in 1926, Max Slevogt, using the freedom of painter's gesture, bravado use of colour spots and intensity of tones and rays of light modelling the figure, offered a suggestive rendition of the magic of the Spanish dance, and expressed the model’s frank sensuality.

Dariusz Kacprzak