Brand New Plaques for the GSI Art Gallery

We just received plaques for our four amazing art pieces in our gallery! We plan to grow our gallery to showcase some of the best guitar related art pieces. A big thank you to the Office Sign Company for making these beautiful custom plaques.

Below are photos and descriptions of our gallery:

Robert Bouchet (1898-1986)

Landscape of the village of Crouttes sur Marne (80km east of Paris) where Bouchet had a country house.
Oil on canvas (undated)

Robert Bouchet was one of the greatest makers of the twentieth century and the founding father of what is called today as the “French school of guitar making”. His career was quite unique because he built his first instrument at the age of 48. It didn’t stop him from establishing a reputation as one of the most influential makers of the twentieth century. Before becoming a luthier, Bouchet was a painter and an artist. He changed his career path, when he decided to build a new guitar for himself in 1946 after his personal guitar had been stolen from his Paris workshop during the chaos of World War II. Bouchet’s reputation as a maker attracted some of the greatest players to his workshop. Among them were: Ida Presti and Alexander Lagoya, Emilio Pujol, Oscar Ghiglia, Turibio Santos, Manuel Lopez Ramos and Julian Bream. Even though Robert Bouchet built only 154 instruments, his legacy is remarkable.

Andrés Segovia (1893-1987)

Original publicity still
c. 1945 Montevideo, Uruguay

Original ink stamp on the back of the photograph:
SENDEROWICZ
FOTOGRAFO
ARAOZ 1495 - T. E. 72-2600

Andrés Segovia was a virtuoso Spanish classical guitarist from Linares, Spain. He has been regarded as one of the greatest guitarists of all time. Many professional classical guitarists today were students of Segovia, or students of his students. Segovia’s contribution to the modern-romantic repertoire not only included commissions but also his own transcriptions of classical and baroque works - so much so that even today the bulk of the standard repertoire is Segovia's - works by Heitor Villa-Lobos, Manuel Ponce, Alexander Tansman, Joaquin Turina, Federico Moreno Torroba, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Federico Mompou, Joaquín Rodrigo continue to be regularly performed new generations of younger guitarists. Segovia is also fondly remembered for his expressive performances, his use of a wide palette of tonal colors and his distinctive musical personality, phrasing and style. His concert and recording career spanned 75 years and he is regarded as the primary force in the twentieth century for elevating the status of the classical guitar from its street/folk origins, to the most pre-eminent concert stages of the world alongside and equal in reputation with the violin, piano, chamber ensembles and great orchestras of the world. In the words of Federico Moreno Torroba: “The musical interpreter who fascinates me the most is Andrés Segovia”. He can be credited to have dignified the classical guitar as a legitimate concert instrument before the discerning music public, which had hitherto viewed the guitar merely as a limited, if sonorous, parlor instrument." In recognition of his contributions to music and the arts, Segovia was ennobled on June 24, 1981 by King Juan Carlos I, who gave Segovia the hereditary title of Marqués de Salobreña (Marquis of Salobreña) in the nobility of Spain.

Andrés Segovia (1893-1987)

Original manuscript of four songs, arranged for guitar
Pencil on music staff paper (c. 1940)

This is a one-and-only original manuscript of four songs arranged by Segovia while he lived in Montevideo, Uruguay: on the outer pages, My Old Kentucky Home and The Miller of the Dee (both unpublished), and on the inside are the two Finnish folk songs later published by Edizioni Musicali Bèrben as #9 and #10 of the 23 Canciones Populares. The story behind this manuscript is quite remarkable. At the time Segovia permanently moved from Montevideo in the mid-1940s, he left behind two large boxes filled with personal belongings with one of his closest friends, Aparicio Mendez (who would later become President of Uruguay from 1976-1981). This manuscript on display here was in this collection, along with a whole host of other items, including such treasures as the original Manuel Ponce manuscript of Concierto del Sur, and the elegantly bound gilt-edged performance copy of this same piece used for the premiere performance in 1941, manuscripts of Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Capriccio Diabolico, Tarantella, and Aranci in fiore, including Segovia’s hand-written edits, and many other compositions & arrangements (both published and unpublished), photographs, books, recital programs and other miscellaneous items. Another highlight in the collection was a manuscript identified by Angelo Gilardino as a movement from the lost Sonata II of Manuel Ponce, which has since been recorded on Naxos by Judicaël Perroy in 2014.

In 2002, descendants of the Mendez family contacted our good friend David Norton, who they hired to assist in the cataloging of the contents of these boxes, which were later auctioned at Sotheby’s. A few of the items were withheld and gifted to David who in turn, gifted two items generously to GSI with the one condition that they be shown publicly in our facility (the other item is the black and white publicity still of Segovia). We are grateful to have these very rare items and honored to be able to display them for all the visitors who pass through our doors.

Manuel Ángeles Ortiz (1895-1984)

Portrait of Andrés Segovia
Charcoal on Paper (c. 1919)

Although the exact date of this composition is unknown, in 1919 Andrés Segovia signed and dedicated this portrait to his manager, Ernesto de Quesada (1886 - 1972), a Cuban-born impresario and the founder of Conciertos Daniel (later known as Hispania Clásica). De Quesada was a prominent figure in the classical music world who also managed artists such as pianist Arthur Rubinstein. By chance, De Quesada’s son would later become the first manager of the Los Romeros Quartet, and this portrait eventually passed from the Quesadas to the Romero family. GSI acquired it in 2023 from Pepe Romero.

Though born in Jaen, Spain, Manuel Ángeles Ortiz spent most of his early adulthood in Granada, where he became close friends with members of the so-called Generation of 27, including Federico García Lorca (1898-1936). There, he took his first steps in the art world, in the studio of José Larrocha (1850-1933) and then later at the School of Arts and Crafts of Granada. After a brief period in Madrid he moved to Paris in 1919 where he continued his studies at the Grande Chaumière Academy and was introduced into the city’s art circles, where he became acquainted with some of the most influential artists of the time, including Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) through Manuel de Falla (1876-1946). His first exhibition in Paris was held at the Galerie Quatre Chemins in 1926. He contributed backdrops and costumes to performances of compositions by Falla, Erik Satie (1866-1925), and Francis Poulenc (1899-1963). He was often in the company of the aristocracy in Paris and the French Riviera, before returning to Madrid in 1932 in the midst of a personal crisis. Ortiz collaborated with the itinerant university theater group La Barraca, led by Eduardo Ugarte (1901-1955) and Lorca. Together with Joaquín Torres García (1874-1949) he designed an avant-garde art center in Madrid, which never materialized due to the Spanish Civil War. He was one of the founders of the Alliance of Antifascist Intellectuals in the Defense of Culture. After the war, he was imprisoned at the concentration camp of Saint-Cyprien, which he was able to leave thanks to Picasso’s intervention. Exiled in Argentina, he would visit Falla and Torres García. In the 1960s he returned to Paris and resumed contact with Picasso and the poet Paul Éluard (1895-1952) and began developing lyrical paintings inspired by the memories of his childhood and adolescence in Granada. In 1981 he received Spain’s National Visual Arts Prize.