La noche de San Benito. Recuerdo de las pitas a Martos O'Neale (The Night of Saint Benedict. Memory of the Whistling of Martos O'Neale)

Antonio Fillol began painting La noche de San Benito. Recuerdo de las pitas a Martos O’Neale (The Night of Saint Benedict. Memory of the Whistling of Martos O’Neale) on 21 March 1903 to represent the violent political response to a student protest that took place the same night outside the headquarters of the Civil Government of Valencia. The protest was covered by the Las Provincias newspaper, which wrote: “Yesterday it seemed that there was an inopportune show of force by the police in Plaza Reina and on Calle Zaragoza, and the even more inopportune presence of the Civil Guard by military order when there was no real need for this extraordinary assistance to disperse unarmed groups of young people”.
Few painters would have considered producing a work on this event without a commission to do so, yet Fillol, known for his critical works and as one of the major exponents of the Social Realism of his time, took the opportunity to criticise the repressive power of the State. The artist employed techniques which lend great dynamism to the painting, for instance his photographic approach, which silhouettes the figures on the margins, and the diagonal composition. This combined imparts a component of realism and immediacy to the composition, as if the painter had actually witnessed it. It also gives the piece a documentary quality. The artificial light reflected on the police officer’s sabres and on the stones the students throw gives the painting a particularly modern feel, almost making it a forerunner to the solutions later practiced by the Futurists.

Raúl Martínez Arranz