Spain has a very strong artistic tradition and we could talk about many of its expressions like
1-2: arquitecture (This is the Alhambra in Granada, which is an Islamic palace built in the 9th century and this one is one of the stunning fairy-tale buildings designed by the Modernist architect Antoni Gaudi)
3: dancing
4-5: literature (here we can see Don Quixote, which was published the early 17th century and which is considered the most influential Spanish work of literature and a selection of poems by the Andalusian poet Juan Ramón Jiménez, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1956).
6-7: Another artistic expression is music. Among many brilliant musicians we can mention the Andalusian Manuel de Falla, who was the most distinguished Spanish composer of the early 20th century. In his musiche achieved a fusion of poetry, asceticism, and ardour that represents the spirit of Spain at its purest, as we can appreciate in this composition…
8-9: There are also reknowned Spanish singers such as the Catalonian soprano Montserrat Caballé and the tenor Plácido Domingo.
butamong the expressions of art we have chosen to talk in a bit more detailed way about painting and sculpture.
10-We will start telling you something about painting.
11-During the 16th and 17th centuries, considered Spain's Golden Age, many famous Spanish painters emerged including artists like
12-Diego de Velázquez
13-At the age of
24 he became an official court painter in the courtof 14-King Philip IV and one of the most important painters of theSpanish Golden Age. He was an excellent portrait artist of the Baroqueperiod.
Between 1656 and
1658, Velázquez painted two works that earned him the name
“painter of the painters” among artists of his time: 15-
Las Hilanderas (The Spinners)and16-Las Meninas (The Maids of Honour) and both paintings contain symbolic complexity
and play with light.
We are going to comment on The Maids of Honour,
which is the most commented painting discussed in art history classes worldwide
Las Meninas,
which includes a self-portrait of the 17th century artist behind his easel /ˈiːzl/, depicts infanta Margarita, the daughter
of Felipe IV surrounded by her ladies-in-waiting (dama de honor), her dwarf/dwɔːv/ and her dog.
It is a complex composition
of a group portrait and a self-portrait. It is like a painted “photograph” that
leads viewers to ask “who is he really painting, the infanta, the king &
queen, or us?”
Some of his
numerous paintings are:
17-The Surrender
of Breda
18-The Drunks
19-Portrait of
Pope Innocent X
20-Old Woman
Frying Eggs
21-Apollo in the
Forge of Vulcan
His ability to
merge color, light and lines has greatly influenced many painters, especially
Picasso and Dalí.
It is Cubism for which Picasso is most renowned. 23-Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, depicting five naked prostitutes, began this new period.24/25-He also recreated 58 cubist versions of Las Meninas.
26-Picasso´s masterpiece is Guernica, a powerful image reflecting the reality of war and its consequences. His inspiration was the bombing of the basque population of Guernica by the German and the Italian Air Forces on 26th April 1937.
27-Salvador Dalí was born in Catalonia. As
a painter he was a Surrealist. His work is
extensive and as it touched different themes. Amongst his pieces of work
there were:
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29-Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate a Second Before
Awakening (1944)
30-The Last Supper (1955)
31-The Persistence of
Memory (1931)There are many other important painters like
32-Francisco de Goya,who dominated Spanish painting in the 18th century.
But now we are going to move on to the second of the artistic manifestations we were going to deal with:
33-Sculpture
There are also lots of important Spanish sculptors that have left an impressive legacy in the art world, such as Alonso Berruguete and Mariano Benlliure.
Alonso Berruguete was born in Castile/kæˈstiːl. He was the most important Spanish sculptor of the Renaissance, known for his intensely emotional sculptures of figures portrayed in spiritual torment or in religious ecstasy.
Some of his sculptures are:
34-Saint Sebastian
35-the Sacrifice of Isaac,
36-the Adoration of the Magi in polychrome wood.
37-Mariano Benlliure was born in Valencia. He was one of the greatest Spanish sculptors of
the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
He made lots of religious sculptures, like 38-Recumbent Christ /rɪˈkʌmbənt/
(yacente)
He was very productive. In fact, his first exhibitions
came before he reached the age of ten.
39-The subject of his art are also everyday events and
street people, like the funerary monument to the bullfighter “Joselito el gallo”, which is
in the cementery of Seville.
In addition, he
created many monuments dedicated to relevant personalities, such as 40-Isabel la Católica and Christopher Columbus or 41-the painter Francisco de Goya.
