Theatrical scenography by Estudio Ressti

Author: Estudio Ressti

Era: Mid-twentieth century

Technique: Painting on paper, cut out and adhered to canvas 

Support: Paper on cavas

Dimensions: 90 x 116 cm.

It is sent with perimeter mat in black.

Piece of theatrical scenography of the set " La Murga". These sets were created between the 40s and 70s, being painted on kraft paper and, to enjoy them, they are cut out  and adhered to canvas with frame.

The theater sets are not signed as they will be painted by groups of artists who worked in studios of well-known set designers. It is recorded that the great paintes of the twentieth century , in their youth, were part of these groups of artists.

Restituto Cendejas Pascual, theatrical set designer and painter, was born in Maranchón (Guadalajara) in 1906; he died in Nerja (Málaga) on 9 April 1997. He opened Estudio Ressti in Calle Olmo in Madrid, a workshop for the performing arts that would remain open from 1940 to 1970.

When Restituto Cendejas Pascual - Resti for his friends - left Maranchón in the early 1920s, it was clear to him that he wanted to succeed in something he had always liked: the world of painting and theatrical scenography. At a time when in theatres the decoration was as important as good scripts.

He entered the world of theatre when he was barely twenty years old in Madrid, where he went from his native Maranchón to earn a living in the mechanical workshop of a fellow countryman. From there he went on to work as a clerk in a bookshop and from there to learn the craft of painting at the School of Fine Arts, which led him to the workshop of a successful stage designer in those years, the Valencian Manuel Martínez Mollá, from whose workshop he went to that of the Catalan Manuel Fontanals, one of the most representative stage directors of the 1920s and 1930s. With Manuel Fontanals he toured the theatres of Madrid until the Civil War, which paralysed part of Spain's artistic life. Resti resumed his activity in the 1940s, with theatrical projects for the great stages of Zaragoza, Barcelona and Valencia. In Zaragoza he made his own debut, signing the set design for the play "La Mala Uva", by Pedro Muñoz Seca; and in Barcelona he created the set design for "Las Maravillosas", by Antonio Paso Cano and Tomás Borrás.

In the mid 1940s he was already flying solo, founding his own performing arts studio: ESTUDIO RESSTI in Calle Olmo in Madrid, from which he carried out numerous productions for the Teatro Español, including works such as "Bodas de Sangre", by Lorca; "Electra", by Benito Pérez Galdós, and "Tierra Baja", by Ángel Guimerá. He not only worked for the Teatro Español, but also for the Teatro de la Zarzuela, the Pavón or the Reina Victoria and, in short, for all those in Madrid, and even toured part of Europe with his productions, triumphing in Paris and London; travelling as far as Japan, where in Tokyo he staged several shows at Sankey Hall, coming to live in Los Angeles to triumph also in the USA with shows with deep Spanish roots, lyric and zarzuela. He travelled halfway around the world, from Egypt to New Zealand.

Estudio Ressti was a studio refuge for a generation of young painters, a place where they could earn a living before becoming painters.