'Costa Brava': Paradoxes of landscape
Figueres, 07/31/12 In 1982 Joan Rabascall (Barcelona, 1935) portrayed the Costa Brava parodying the idea of an idyllic landscape digested by the communication mechanisms of mass culture. He set his camera in 12 non-places chosen for their non-photogenic image and exhibited them at the Galería Canaleta in Figueres, together with a limited edition on...
'Portrait of Spain. Masterpieces from the Prado' at the Queensland Art Gallery
Queensland, 07/30/12 They are 79 paintings and 22 works on paper that have traveled to Australia. All of them span more than three centuries of Spanish history. It is a project included in the program Prado Internacional, that allows the Spanish gallery to act as an special ambassador to the Australian society. The curator is Javier Portus, Curator in Chief of...
A tribute to Alberto Corral
Santander, 07/25/12 The importance of Alberto Corral collection lies in its pioneering role in the Spain of the '60s, '70s and '80s. A testimony of Spanish art in recent times that features works by Tápies, Palazuelo, Pérez Villalta, Gordillo, Albacete, Broto, Barceló or Uslé. A select list of artists - adjusted in number of works –, without fanfare or...
Still Life paintings by Luis Meléndez in Asturias
Cudillero, 07/24/12 Mastery of light, expressive color, material quality and, above all, detail. Luis Meléndez (Naples, 1716-Madrid, 1780) has the ability to captivate the audience with a challenge to realism that transcends the canvas and the objects represented. Arranged on a table of wood or stone, or even placed on the floor – with the rare exception of a...
Capa, "Chim" and Taro, shoots against war
Madrid, 07/24/12 Sometimes a shot is enough to define a moment. A women's group that raises their fists when a hearse passes, soldiers that light a cigarette during the combat, the militiaman who falls mortally wounded ... These are moments that occur in seconds, the same time a photographer needs to press the button on his camera. Some of these images have...
'Motherwell and the Poets "(Paz and Alberti)
Madrid, 07/23/12 Robert Motherwell (1915-1991) was a baldness figures of American Abstract Expressionism and the New York School. Writer, editor and painter – Nobel Prize in 1990 - Motherwell always showed great interest in Spanish culture and, especially, with some Republican authors. His engravings illustrated poems of Rafael Alberti and Octavio Paz, who also...
Focus-Abengoa Foundation Painting Prize 2012
Seville, 07/19/12 The Focus-Abengoa Painting Prize for 2012, one of the first international awards in the arts world, is announced. Artists over 18 years that has not received prize or second prize in previous calls, can contribute with one original work that has not been submitted to other contests or previous calls of the Focus-Abengoa Painting Prize. The...
Beauty in its purest form
Madrid, 07/19/12 It is a declaration of love to Cuba on photographic film. To its landscapes, its historical characters, its smell, its sounds, its streets ... its people. To all things that captivate who visit the country and walk on the Malecón. In short, is a declaration of love to that magic the country has, only understandable for those who have visited...
Permanence of Ángeles Santos
Figueres, 07/18/12 After the commemoration of the centenary of Ángeles Santos in 2011 and the exhibition-tribute held in his hometown, Portbou, the Museu de l'Empordà held a new anthological to claim the role of this unusual and unorthodox painter who arrived on the Madrid artistic scene with just 17. Creator of a corpus of work linked to current figurative...
Firefly or Mountebank?
New York, 07/18/12 In his Portrait of the Artist as a mountebank, Jean Satrobinski showed us how since the nineteenth century the jester, the mountebank and the clown have been taken as an hyperbolic and deforming allegorical image by with some artists who have tried to show themselves and explain the nature of their work. A covert self-portrait that Yayoi Kusama...
Bernardí Roig captures the moment of a grimace
Palma de Mallorca, 07/18/12 The time caught in a grimace. Thousands of faces individualize the space of The Llotja, thanks to the latest work by Bernardí Roig. This is a collective work which involved 1,700 volunteers, who have made grimaces with closed-eyes and have been photographed by the artist. Each person, turned into an object of art, is both protagonist and public...
The Puech Collection revealed
Avignon, 07/17/12 Under the theme Marcel Puech: Passion for drawing, the Musée Calvet presents a unique tribute to the most illustrious antiquarian, collector and art critic in Avignon. Curated by Sylvain Boyer, Chief Curator of the museum, this exhibition program offers to visitors a significant portion of the drawings from the Puech Collection which is...
Master and disciple show their skills in Bilbao
Bilbao, 07/16/12 They look like the same painting, but if you get a closer view you will appreciate the differences. The portrait of Elizabeth of Valois painted by Antonio Moro is more immediate, the tones of the face are more credible and the folds of the dress are made with greater thoroughness. Alonso Sanchez Coello's painting, however, is larger, has...
The future patronage law generates high expectations
Madrid, 07/13/12 It has not yet born but everybody is waiting for it with expectancy. According to a study made by the Fundación Contemporánea, culture professionals consider that the future patronage law will be able to involve society in the promotion and the finance of that sector. Moreover, half of the institutions surveyed planned to increase their gains...
Titian reinterpreted in a modern way
London, 07/13/12 It is a small innovation in the art world. Several contemporary artists including choreographers, composers and poets explore three works by Titian, inspired by Ovid's poem Metamorphoses. The three paintings Diana and Actaeon, The Death of Actaeon and Diana and Callisto are now exhibited in the rooms of the museum, next to other contemporary...
William Blake or the critique of reason
Madrid, 07/11/12 Freethinker and nonconformist. Both words can define William Blake's production, a British creator whose prints, paintings and poems are fuelled by his rejection of social, political and religious inconsistencies of the Enlightenment. Misunderstood and scorned in his day but appreciated by modern critics, he is the protagonist of an exhibition...
The restoration of 'The Paradise', by Tintoretto, at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum
Madrid, 07/11/12 Not that long ago, the restoration works of a masterpiece were almost a secret. Its divulgence, according to the experts, could create doubts about its authenticity and suggest manipulation. Neither the visitors were particulary interested in that type of studios. But times has changed and now people enjoys spectacular discoveries. There is a...
"Caravaggio's drawings are made by a vage, unsteady and sketched hand"
Madrid, 07/09/12 It could be the discovery of the century. A hundred of drawings that the team led by Maurizio Bernardelli Curuz and Adriana Conconi Fedrigolli attributed to Caravaggio could become one of the greatest discoveries in History. If the assertions of these experts are true, the Peterzano Archive where the sketches are conserved, could clear a lot of...
'The conversion of St. Paul', at the Museum of Catalonia
Barcelona, 07/09/12 For more than six months, the MNAC's technicians have worked together to recover this work, which was badly damaged in 1985 in a fire. In that days, the painting was attributed to the Valencian painter José Vergara (1726 - 1799) but now the experts have been able to identify the true author: Juan Bautista Maíno (1581-1649). This painter, who...
The Loire estuary is full of contemporary spirit
Nantes, 07/06/12 Wild animals in the trees, houses sinking, ships that seem to slip the pier, skeletons of snakes on the beach ... A walk along the Loire estuary between Nantes and Saint-Nazaire it is enough to notice that something does not fit into the landscape. Small canals and paths leading to the river are the context that features the works of authors...
'Eduardo Arroyo. The Mystic Lamb' at the Prado
Madrid, 07/05/12 Eduardo Arroyo admits this reinterpretation of the Mystic Lamb is the result of an obsession that began several years ago, when he saw the work at in Ghent, where it is preserved jealously. He never thought such research, or "spiritual reflection" as he calls it, might be seen at the Prado one day. But so it has been. He started drawing in...
‘In light of silk ', exhibition at Lázaro Galdiano Museum and the Alhambra of Granada
Madrid, 07/03/12 The organizers prefer to use the word "project" instead of "exhibition", because the latter is a part of the first. An ambitious project which object is “to recover Nasrid textiles, an unknown Heritage that, after many vicissitudes, is preserved in a few museums." It is certain that the exhibition shows textiles, but it also offers visitors a...
'The Early Dürer' at the National Museum in Nuremberg
Nuremberg, 07/02/12 Some experts from the Germanic National Museum began an investigation about Albrecht Dürer’s production three years ago and that exhibition is the result of their research. It is "the largest and most important exhibition organized in Germany during the last 40 years," according to art critics and those who have already visited it. More than a...