(Auto)biography of a Failure; the Painter and Civil Servant Adolfo Moreno Sanjuán Through his Memories

Abstract

Adolfo Moreno Sanjuán (1888-1965) completed his education at the Escuela Especial de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado in Madrid, but soon after his graduation he accepted an administrative post in the Minis-try of Economic Development. From then on his creative work was limited to a few admissions in National Exhibitions, the insufficient consolation of the Salones de Otoño and occasional participation in lesser events. The article presents a collation of his unpublished memoirs with diverse sources in archives and periodicals. This ena-bles us, on the one hand, to reconstruct his long artistic career and to complete the image we have of the artistic establishment of the period, since it offers a perspective frequently buried beneath the hegemonic accounts. On the other hand, within the specific context of the artist’s autobiography, a discourse analysis of the material provided by his text helps us to problematize this kind of “ego-document” and to propose a countermodel of both historiographic and identity representation.