Amalia Avia is one of the most representative practitioners of the group of Spanish realist artists who trained at the San Fernando School of Fine Arts of Madrid. While she engaged with differing aesthetics and techniques promulgated by the avant-gardes, she never relinquished its signs of identity and its way of turning everyday elements into the object of creation. Since their time together at the school the members of the group were to remain long-lasting friends: Carmen Laffón (1934), the López Hernández brothers, Isabel Quintanilla (1938-2017), Antonio López (1936) and María Moreno (1933-2020). Also at the school Avia met her future husband, Lucio Muñoz (1929-1998), whom she married in 1960.

Apart from depicting views of corners, facades, shops or nooks and crannies of the Madrid ever present in her work, Amalia Avia also painted scenes with objects.

Here, a rag and bone man’s cart shares the space with the somewhat sordid wall of a facade worn away by the passing of time, a neglected space giving us an idea of the existence on the other side of the wall. Again, the subdued colours and the greys transmit an air of sadness and melancholy.

Something in the composition, in the tone, and in the atmosphere reminds us of the sad and dark city of the post-war years, in which the changes slowly taking place in the new city are not yet to be seen.