Spain has a long, varied, and distinguished artistic heritage, which includes some of the most important figures in Western culture. The period from about 1500 to 1681, known as the Golden Age, is considered the most brilliant era of Spain’s artistic history. Still, at no time has Spain ceased to be a culturally vital country, and the 20th century in particular has been a highly productive and creative one; indeed its first few decades came to be called the Silver Age. The Spanish Civil War of 1936–39 marked a break in the development of arts. Many leading artists and intellectuals went into exile at the end of the war. Within Spain the Franco regime practised sweeping censorship which limited the form artistic expression could take. Some major 20th-century artists have now sought inspiration in the country’s history and folk traditions, while others have joined the most modern developments in their field.
Artists – More Than Just Dali
El GrecoEl Greco was born in 1541 on the island of Crete and died on April 7, 1614 in Toledo, Spain. He had a highly individual dramatic and
expressionistic style, met with the puzzlement of his contemporaries, but gained newfound appreciation in the 20th century. He was also a sculptor and architect.
Diego Velazquez
Diego Rodriguez de Silva Velazquez, who died on August 6, 1660, was the most important Spanish painter of the 17th century; a giant of Western art, Velazquez is universally acknowledged as one of the world’s greatest artists. The naturalistic style in which he was trained provided a language for the expression of his remarkable power of observation in portraying both the living model and still life. Stimulated by the study of 16th-century Venetian painting, he grew from a master of faithful likeness and characterisation into the creator of masterpieces of visual impression unique in his time. With brilliant diversity of brushstrokes and subtle harmonies of colour, he achieved effects of form and texture, space, light, and atmosphere, which make him the chief forerunner of 19th-century French Impressionism.
The number of personal documents remaining is very small, and official documentation relating to his paintings is relatively rare. Since he seldom signed or dated his works, their identification and chronology has often to be based on stylistic evidence alone. Though many copies of his portraits were evidently made in his studio by assistants, his own production was not large and his surviving autographed works number fewer than 150. He is known to have worked slowly, and during his later years much of his time was occupied by his duties as a court official in Madrid.
Francisco De Goya
Francisco de Goya was born on March 30, 1746, at Fuendetodos, Spain and died on April 16, 1828, in Bordeaux, France. He was an artist whose multifarious paintings, drawings, and engravings reflected contemporary historical upheavals and influenced important 19th and 20th-century painters. The series of etchings entitled
The Disasters of War, 1810–14
records the horrors of the Napoleonic invasion. His masterpieces include
The Naked Maja and The Clothed Maja.
Pablo Picasso
Picasso was born on October 25, 1881 in Malaga, Spain and died on April 8, 1973 in Mougins, France. Classified as a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and stage designer, he was one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century and the creator of Cubism.
An enormous body of Picasso’s work remains, and the legend lives on, a tribute to the vitality of the disquieting Spaniard with the ‘sombre piercing’ eyes who superstitiously believed that work would keep him alive. For nearly 80 of his 91 years Picasso devoted himself to an artistic production that contributed significantly to, and paralleled the whole development of, modern art in the 20th century.
On 27 April 1937, Guernica, a little Basque village in northern Spain and the historical site of the Basques ‘traditional rights guaranteed to them by Spanish monarchs, was mercilessly bombed by the German volunteer air-force in the service of General Franco’s nationalist forces (greater detail was provided in
Chapter 2). At that time it was the worst bombing from the air of a civilian population in history. Sixteen hundred civilians were killed or wounded and the town burned for three days. News of the massacre reached Paris immediately and by May 1st more than a million protesters flooded the streets to express outrage in the largest May Day demonstration in the city’s history.
Picasso was shocked and outraged by the still photographs and the newsreels and immediately rushed home to sketch the first images of his mural that would become the 20th century’s most powerful statement on canvas of the horrors of war, and his personal statement of the obscenity. The central figures are a woman with outstretched arms, a bull, and a horse in agony. The painting
Guernica was delivered to the Spanish Pavilion at an Exhibition already in progress. It soon became the most
visited attraction and in the course of a few years, a constant reminder of what had engulfed Spain.
On the centenary of Picasso’s birth and after Franco’s death, Spain’s new King and government celebrated the event by transferring the painting to Spain. It is now housed in the Reina Sofia, Spain’s national museum of modern art in Madrid and has long been acclaimed as a masterpiece. For many years it has represented artistic and intellectual opposition to the Franco regime.