Between heaven and earth.
Twelve glances at el Greco,
four hundred years later
Sites: Museo Nacional de Escultura de Valladolid
/ Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid
Dates: Valladolid, from April 29th to July 27th
/ Madrid, from September 10th to November 8th
Curator: Isabel Durán
This exhibition will highlight the Greco as a today´s artist. This project aims to explore the way the influence of el Greco can be felt in the work of twelve contemporary artists that are currently creating and that are clear witnesses of the influence of his art, still alive in contemporay art.
The 4th Centenary aims to find out what the influence of el Greco represents in the current creation, in 2014. "Few classics have influenced art in such intense way in the last decades", remarks the Curator of this Exhibition. "Maybe just Velázquez, Goya and el Greco remain with a strong presence and heart in the so called contemporary art".
"It is not difficult to find his trace in good art, although not being neither evident nor shapes and proposals linking to his work be kept, as it did happen in the creations of the artists late in the XIXth Century and early in XXth, as it was the case of Pablo Picasso, Paul Cézanne and others, even reaching Jackson Pollock".
"The strong pressence of el Greco in today´s art arises from the path he opened through the trascendence of things, even although it may not have mainly in our time a religious meaning."
The exhibition will try to focus on the influence of el Greco in contemporary art creation. It wil showcase the work of twelve artists in which the pressence of El Greco is clear. It will be an incursion in their work, in the creation of a dozen of artists coming out from the culture of a country, Spain, that keeps vigorously his seal.
Exhibition
José Manuel Broto (Zaragoza, 1949)
"I share wit El Greco two core things in my work. Regarding colour, my interest in acid colours, those of almost impossible harmonies; and, regarding design, my incresing interest in the dizzyingwhirlwind of the works".
EG2, 2014 AcrÃlico sobre lienzo 300 x 200 cm.
Colección del artista
Jorge Galindo (Madrid, 1965)
"El Greco, revisited in Borox" is the title that Galindo gave to a broad series of works he created betweeen 2001 and 2006. Most of them have large dimmensions and, on them, Galindo links El Greco´s images with own ones, in a game that distorts those by el Greco and, simultaneously, bring them to us with the strenght of an explosion of light and painting.
De la serie El Greco revisitado en Borox, 2006
Temple sobre lienzo 300 x 200 cm.
CortesÃa GalerÃa Helga de Alvear
Konstantina, 2008
FotografÃa en color siliconada bajo metacrilato166 x 125 cm.
CortesÃa del artista y de la GalerÃa Juana de Aizpuru
Pierre Gonnord (Cholet, Fr., 1963)
"Any artist of portraits has to necessarily think of El Greco, Goya and Velázquez. Three breakers that are essential to my work". Gonnord expresses this way the influence of those three in his photographies.
We can see a clear paralelism betwween his portrait series and the Apostolates of El Greco.
Luis Gordillo (Sevilla, 1934)
It was in 1966 when Gordillo wrote: "Yesterday, I went to El Prado Museum,. (...) Everything was full of interest, every single milimeter, each pleat, colour... caused in me an essential emotion. I visited particularly romanic and gothic paintings, also Berruguete, Ricci... and my astonishment reached the top before El Greco (...) Before El Greco, in the end, my last sensation was that of having lost painting to reach time (...) Through the windows of El Greco I approached total life, the whole Universe".
Later, in 1990, Gordillo said he felt el Greco "more advanced than Manet and, if I move away from him, I can almost see Jackson Pollock".
Sagrado Corazón de Jesús en Vos confÃo, 1992
Óleo sobre lienzo 242 x 348 cm.
Colección Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina SofÃa
Secundino Hernández (Madrid, 1975)
There is a clear and strong pressence of El greco in his works. "I have been always fascinated by El Greco´s Apostolates.(...). His compositions are incredible, as by a mad painter".
Sol y sombra, 2014
Tinte, gouache, acrÃlico, alquÃdico y óleo sobre lienzo265 x 184 cm.
CortesÃa del artista y GalerÃa Heinrich Ehrhardt, Madrid
Cristina Iglesias (San Sebastián, 1956)
"The spaces she creates are always singular, they become a kind of proof of how the natural can be human and divine at the same time", remarks Isabel Duran.
Sin tÃtulo, (BerlÃn II), 1991
Chapa oxidada, vidrio y tapicerÃa 220 x 104 x 106 cm.
Colección de la artista
Carlos León (Ceuta, 1948)
León feels that el Greco´s art is core in his work. He recalls his visists to El Prado Museum to contemplate the paintings of el Greco as one of the activities that boosted his creative flow. And he also talks about his 8 years in New York with special mention to his usual visits to see two crucial works in El Greco´s art and whith a clear pressence in his own production: "View of Toledo" and "Portrait of Cardinal fernando Niño de Guevara".
El Cardenal Don Fernando Niño de Guevara, 2013Óleo sobre dibond
TrÃptico, 200 x 150 cm cada pieza Colección del artista.
Din Matamoro (Vigo, 1958)
The search of the interior light that illuminates from inside "creating flashes of sense and knowledge in the performed object" is something that, for isabel Durán, curator of the Exhibition, Matamoro shares with El Greco.
Cenital 1, 2013
AcrÃlico sobre lienzo 220 x 330 cm.
Colección del artista
Marina Núñez (Palencia, 1966)
"The first good painting I saw in my life was "Saint Sebastian" in the Cathedral of Palencia". The work by Mariña Nuñez share many things with El Greco´s; there is a clear conceptual meeting in the will to perform what lies beyond what we can see.
Vista y plano de Toledo, 2013
VÃdeo monocanal, 1’
Colección de la artista
Pablo Reinoso (Buenos Aires, 1955)
Intertwinings, bodies with crossed tensions, the de-structuring and twisting as the evocative images of the fragility of human being, all proposals by el Greco that are present in Reinoso´s work.
Laocoonte, 2014
Madera tallada186,5 x 150,5 x 35 cm.
Colección del artista
Montserrat Soto (Barcelona, 1961)
Landscapes by Montserrat Soto image becomes something disquieting, as if spatial references disappeared. Her scenes cause an unexplainable tension, "a phisical and mental sensation that, to my point of view, matches El Greco´s landscapes with hers". This is how the Curator of this Exhibition explains the impact that Montserrat Soto´s work causes in those who contemplate it.
Sin tÃtulo. Terrado 3, 1997
FotografÃa190 x 150 cm.
CortesÃa GalerÃa Luis Adelantado
DarÃo Villalba (San Sebastián, 1939)
Central figure in the Spanish art of the XXth century, his work is an example of the most expressive and torn art of his generation. The characters he chooses are individuals that llive in the boundaries of the human, touch the barrier between reality and irreality, as it occurs with those by el Greco, always both here and beyond.
Entre dos mundos, 2008
FotografÃa, óleo, barniz, grava y arena sobre photolinen entelado y lienzoTrÃptico, 250 x 200 cm cada pieza
Colección del artista