Spanish Art

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Spanish Art
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Artists

• El Greco
• Diego Velázquez
• Francisco de Goya
• Pablo Picasso
• Salvador Dalí

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El Greco

• El Greco was born in 1541 on the Greek
  island of Crete. His real name is Domenikos
  Theotocopoulos the name by which he is
  universally known, El Greco, means the Greek.
  Little is known of his younger years. When he
  was in his 20s, he spent time studying with
  Italian artists in Venice and Rome. Most of his
  works consist of religious paintings and
  portraits.
• This is El Grecos self-portrait.

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• In 1577 El Greco moved to Spain. He settled
  in Toledo and spent the rest of his life there.
  Many of his paintings are still located in
  Toledo, although the Prado also houses quite a
  few. The painting here is well-known and is
  called The Burial of Count Orgaz. It hangs in the
  Church of San Tomé in Toledo.

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• While El Greco, unlike most other Spanish
  artists, probably doesnt have a single painting
  for which he is best known, he does have a
  distinctive style. Notice the elongated face and
  fingers in this painting, entitled The Repentant
  Peter.

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Diego Velázquez

• Diego Velázquez, born in Seville in 1599, was
  a more conventional painter than most of the
  other well-known Spanish artists. At the age of
  11 or 12, he was apprenticed to a master painter,
  and at the age of 18 he became qualified as a
  master painter himself.

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• During his youth he did religious paintings
  and a type of scene paintings called bodegones.
  At the age of 24 he became court painter, and
  from then on he became known for his portraits.
  He remained a court favorite for the rest of his
  life. His most famous painting, Las Meninas
  (The Maids of Honor), hangs in the Prado in
  Madrid.

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Francisco de Goya

• Francisco de Goya, frequently called the
  father of modern art, was born in a village in
  the province of Zaragoza in 1746. Goya followed
  a more traditional path than Dalí and Picasso.
  As a teenager, he entered the service of a local
  artist. He later enrolled in the royal academy
  and then became the court painter.

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• Later, however, he became disillusioned with
  the vanity of court life, and his paintings
  became darker and more violent. In 1808
  Spaniards rose up against French domination, and
  many were executed. Goyas most famous painting
  is called El 2 de mayo.

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• When he was in his 70s, he became very ill,
  and after he recovered, his works became even
  darker. His most famous work from that period is
  Saturn Devouring One of His Children. Goya died
  in 1828.

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Pablo Picasso

• Picasso, born in Málaga in 1881, was a rebel
  from the start and, as a teenager, began to
  frequent the Barcelona cafés where intellectuals
  gathered. He soon went to Paris, the capital of
  art, and soaked up the works of Manet, Gustave
  Courbet, and Toulouse-Lautrec, whose sketchy
  style impressed him greatly.

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• Picasso went through several periods before
  striking upon Cubism, the style for which he is
  best known. Cubism is essentially the
  fragmenting of three-dimensional forms into flat
  areas of pattern and color, overlapping and
  intertwining so that shapes and parts of the
  human anatomy are seen from the front and back at
  the same time.
• This painting is called Portrait de
  Ambroise Vollard.

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• The bombing that resulted in the total
  destruction of the town of Guernica during
  Spains 1936-1939 civil war is the subject of
  Picassos best-known work, entitled simply
  Guernica. Picasso, completely opposed to Franco
  (dictator from 1937 until his death in 1975),
  refused to allow his painting into Spain as long
  as Franco lived. For years it was housed in New
  Yorks Museum of Modern Art, but now its in the
  Reina Sofia museum in Madrid.

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Salvador Dalí

• Salvador Dalí was born in 1904 in Figueras,
  Spain, a small town about two hours from
  Barcelona in the province of Catalonia. Although
  Dalí excelled in his academic pursuits, he never
  took final examinations, deeming that he had no
  need for the type of education offered by formal
  schooling.

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• Dalí came under the influence of two forces
  that shaped his philosophy and his art. The first
  was Sigmund Freud's theory of the unconscious,
  introduced to Dalí in Freud's book The
  Interpretation of Dreams. The second was his
  association with the French surrealists. When
  Dalí visited Paris for the first time, he was
  introduced to the leading surrealists in the
  movement, but because of his lack of interest in
  politics, he was eventually shunned by this group.

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• Under the influence of the surrealist
  movement, Dalí's artistic style crystal-ized into
  the disturbing blend of precise realism and
  dream-like fantasy that became his trade- mark.
  Dalí often de-scribed his pictures as
  hand-painted dream photographs and had certain
  favorite and recur-ring images, such as the human
  figure with half-open drawers protruding from it,
  burning giraffes, and watches bent and flowing as
  if made from melting wax.
• This painting is called Woman with
  Drawers.

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• My personal favorite is Swans Reflecting
  Elephants, which is on display at the Dalí museum
  in Paris.

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• Dalís most famous painting is called The
  Persistence of Memory.