José Zamora (1889-1971) - El Príncipe quiso ser princesa

TECHNICAL DATA Author: José de Zamora (José Zamora Vaxeras, «Pepito Zamora»). Madrid, 1889 - Sitges (Barcelona), 1971. Title: The Prince wanted to be a princess. Year: 1920. Technique: black ink on paper. Original drawing, unique piece. Sheet measurements: 337 x 215 mm (33.7 x 21.5 cm). Measurements with frame: 51 cm x 39 cm. Presentation: matted, with a dark gray window mat and a gray frame with a silver edge, under glass. Scene: Couple with a feather headdress. Signature: Monogram and date in ink on the right, at hand height: «J.Z. 20» [VERIFY: reading of the monogram with a magnifier] Condition: Good condition for its age. Paper slightly yellowed, with a few light humidity and rust stains in the lower half of the sheet. No visible tears. [VERIFY: check outside the frame and the back] Provenance: private collection, Madrid. [VERIFY: how and when acquired] THE WORK Two half-length nude figures. On the left, a woman with an extremely tall feather headdress, long earrings and a bead necklace ending in a tassel, hand on the hip. On the right, a figure with androgynous features and a smooth turban that surrounds her with the arm and supports her hand on the chest. The rest of the sheet is blank: Zamora concentrates all the drawing in the upper third. It is part of a set of ink drawings made by Zamora in 1920 under the title «The Prince wanted to be a princess». They are offered on Catawiki separately, in independent lots. THE AUTHOR The most celebrated fashion illustrator of Art Deco, Erté, remembered José de Zamora with emotion in his memoirs, Things I Remember (1975). They had met in Paris, at the workshop of Paul Poiret, the couturier credited with the modern concept of haute couture, when neither of them had a name yet. José Zamora Vaxeras, who signed as José de Zamora and whom all of Madrid called Pepito Zamora, was born in Madrid in 1889 and died in Sitges (Barcelona) in 1971. He studied with the painter Eduardo Chicharro. From 1910 he published drawings in Nuevo Mundo and La Esfera, the two most prestigious illustrated magazines of the time. When World War I broke out in 1914 he returned to Spain, and in 1918, in San Sebastián, Serge Diaghilev and Anna Pavlova commissioned him to design costumes for their ballets. That same year he opened a fashion house on Núñez de Balboa Street in Madrid, where he dressed actresses such as Catalina Bárcena and Gloria Laguna. He was part of Ramón Gómez de la Serna’s circle at the Pombo café, and Gómez de la Serna portrayed him in La sagrada cripta de Pombo. He illustrated stories for Editorial Calleja. He also wrote: his tale Princesas de aquelarre appeared in 1915 in La Novela de Bolsillo, and Renacimiento edition reissued it in 2012 with a prologue by Luis Antonio de Villena. In 1919 he premiered at the Petit Casino in Madrid the comedy Sueños de opio, written in collaboration with Tono and Tomás Pellicer. In 1921 he drew the costumes for Farsa y licencia de la reina castiza, by Valle-Inclán, for the production prepared by Cipriano Rivas Cherif, which did not premiere. Thirteen of those costumes, in wash over colored cardboard, are preserved at the Madrid Regional Library. Zamora’s Parisian career is the least known in Spain and the longest. He was the costume designer for the Casino de Paris in 1920–1921, Concert Mayol between 1922 and 1927, Palace between 1923 and 1928, Moulin Rouge between 1924 and 1927, and Folies Bergère between 1926 and 1929. After World War II he returned to work for the Casino de Paris until 1961 and for Théâtre Mogador between 1947 and 1957. The playwright Francisco Nieva, who arrived in Paris after the war, wrote that the posters for the Casino de Paris signed by Zamora were everywhere and that he could be compared to Erté. That comparison falls short. In Zamora’s ink drawings of 1920 his line is more nervous and freer than Erté’s in the same years, and that’s why his work better withstands the test of time. His style was widely imitated in his lifetime: he left a mark on Antonio Juez, Julio Antonio and the costume designer Víctor María Cortezo. His work is in public collections on both sides of the Atlantic. The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota (Florida, United States) preserves in the Tibbals Circus Collection a series of circus costume designs painted by Zamora between 1968 and 1970. The Madrid Regional Library holds the figurines of La reina castiza. In 2022, on the fiftieth anniversary of his death, the Sitges Museums dedicated to him at the Museu de Maricel the exhibition «Pepito Zamora, a magazine artist», and in 2025 the Madrid Regional Library programmed a lecture on his work by researcher Isabel Alba Nieva. His original figurines for the Paris music hall of the twenties circulate today among specialized dealers in Paris, and the ink drawings from 1920, such as this one, are the most sought-after part of his Spanish graphic production.

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