Miguel Ángel Fernández Ordóñez
- 2012
- Oil on canvas
- 130 x 90 cm
- Cat. P_766
- Comissioned from the artist in 2011
The commission for a portrait of Miguel Ángel Fernández Ordóñez was awarded to Juan Moreno Aguado, one of the painters from Madrid's 'new figuration' movement. As in the artist's many other portraits, he paints the sitter's facial features and gaze with a certain degree of photorealism, reflecting his admiration for the psychological intensity of traditional painters such as Antonio Moro. The result is to make these parts of the painting stand out from the rest. The composition is intentionally unadventurous; the focus is on providing an effective institutional image, with the sitter in a formal pose befitting the protocol of the official portrait. Like his immediate predecessors —including Hernán Cortés and Carmen Laffón— Moreno Aguado dispenses with the rhetoric contained in many of the paintings in the Banco de España's historical portrait gallery. However, he does place the governor in front of the recognisable wood panelling of the main floor of the Bank's central offices.
There are a few other items in the picture: an unidentified book, held open with the sitter's index finger and —in a central position— a spherical paperweight, possibly ceramic, decorated with the Taoist taijitu motif of intertwined yin and yang symbols. Fernández Ordóñez publicly expressed an interest in Taoism. and the symbol also denotes the role played by the Banco de España in regulating opposing elements in the economy. The object enables the painter to develop his fondness for curved, reflective surfaces, later expressed in objects such as convex mirrors and suits of armour, to generate a play of reflections inspired by the technical mastery of the Flemish painters (especially Jan van Eyck) and bring an air of metaphysical incongruity to conventional compositions.
Governor of the Banco de España 2006 - 2012
Miguel Ángel Fernández Ordóñez holds a degree in Law and Economics and is a state civil servant. He formerly lectured in political economy at the Complutense University of Madrid. He comes from an important political family and his brother Francisco Fernández Ordóñez was a minister in the UCD and PSOE governments. Most of his career has been spent in the public sector.
He was a member of the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) until 2000. Under the premiership of Felipe González, he served as secretary of state for economy and planning (1982–1986) in the team led by Miguel Boyer. In 1986, he became a member of parliament for Madrid and served as secretary of state for trade until 1988, when he became the acting executive director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). He chaired the Antitrust Tribunal (1983-1995) and the Commission of the National Electric System (1995-1999). In 2004, he once again returned to senior political positions. Under Pedro Solbes, at the Ministry of Economy, he was secretary of state for finance and budgets and chair of the state tax administration agency, designing the tax reform and preparing the budget stability laws.
In 2006 he was appointed governor of the Banco de España. During his term of office, Spain saw the most significant banking crisis of recent decades, aggravated by the effects of the international financial crisis. As governor, he served on the boards of the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision.
His wife, Inés Alberdi, was the last director of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) before it was merged into UN Women in 2011.
Other works by Juan Moreno Aguado