El Greco

El Greco at the Museo Nacional Thussey-Bornemisza.

El Greco was a master of Spanish painting, whose highly individual dramatic and expressionistic style met with the puzzlement of his contemporaries but gained newfound appreciation in the 20th century. He married Byzantine traditions with those of Western painting. He is regarded as a precursor of both Expressionism and Cubism. He has been characterised by modern scholars as an artist so individual that he belongs to no school. He also worked as a sculptor and as an architect.

El Greco was a nickname, and the artist normally signed his paintings with his full birth name, Domenikos Theotokopoulos, in Greek letters often adding the word Kes, which means Cretan in Ancient Greek.

Extreme distortion of body characterises was a feature in his latest works, such as a tendency to elongate the human figure. He discarded classicist criteria such as measure and proportion. In his mature works he demonstrated a characteristic tendency to dramatise rather than to describe.

He regarded colour as the most important and the most ungovernable element of painting and declared that colour had primacy over form. He used brilliant, dissonant colours and strange shapes, sometimes disregarding the laws of nature. Painter Francisco Pacheco who visited El Greco in 1611, wrote that El Greco liked 'the colours crude and unmixed in great blocks as a boastful display of his dexterity' and that 'he believed in constant repainting and retouching in order to make the broad masses flat as in nature'.

Christ with the Cross, 1587-1596

Christ holding the cross was a favourite motif with El Greco.  He created an isolated image that seems to have been extremely popular with his clients to judge from the nunmber of known autographed versions and copies. He transformed a narrative episode into a devotional one, presenting a moment from Christ's sacrifice that encourages the viewer to focus on his physical suffering. 

In these images Christ is depicted alone, standing, and bust-length or slightly more than half-length, holding the cross and wearing the crown of thorns that produces wounds from which the blood runs down his face and neck. The backgrounds of these compositions are either a dark sky, or, as in the present canvas, a neutral tone that emphasises the figure and further encourages the use of the painting as a devotional image. The episode, which took place during Christ's ascent of Mount Golgotha, depicts him pausing to look up at the sky and establish a dialogue with God the Father, during which he accepts his sacrifice. The result is to emphasise the spiritual aspect of this episode over the earthly, narrative one.

The hands are always crucial elements in these compositions. Like Christ's face, they function to convey the emotional mood, while the beautiful manner in which they are painted emphasises their position and symbolic function. They have long, slender fingers of elegant proportions with the bone structure clearly visible, terminating in pearly nails that are firmly and sensitively modelled.

The Immaculate Conception, 1608-1614

A very poor photograph of this painting, I'm afraid. I had problems with my camera while we were in Madrid.

The Immaculate Conception was originally in the church of San Vicente. The figure of the Madonna floats heavenward in a proxysm of ecstacy as she is supported by long, distorted angels. The fantastic view of Toledo below, abstractly rendered, is dazzling in its ghostly moonlit brilliance, and the clusters of roses and lillies, symbols of the Virgin's purity, are unalloyed in their sheer beauty.

The Annunciation, 1575-76

Throughout his life El Greco painted numerous versions of the Anunciation, thus allowing his stylistic development to be traced through his treatment of this Bibilical episode. This painting is thought to be one of the last versions to be executed in Italy, and is clearly influenced by the Venetian style. From her prayer-stool on the left of the painting, the Virgin listens attentively to the message of the Archangel, a figure rendered very much in the Veronese style. 

The light and the colouring owe much to Titian, a painter El Greco admired, while the arrangement of the figures and the treatment of the drapery strongly recall the work of Tintoretto. Here, El Greco places the figures within a simple architectural setting, loosely framing them to make the scene more realistic.

The hands are highly expressive, showing the Virgin's fear and surprise and the angel's adoration.

Looking closer

The Anunciation, 1596-1600

This is a small-scale replica of the canvas on the same subject now in the Museo del Prado and was originally part of the altarpiece painted for the church of the Augustinian Collegio de Nuestra Senora de la Encarnacion. 

El Greco painted the scenes in small spaces, emphasising the vertical format, and bathing them in a ghostly light that enhances the unreality of the figures, which are arranged in a very marked foreshortening and have very expressive features. The colours which are cold, intense and contrasting, are appliced very loosely over powerful anatomical constructions and are perfect of El Greco's hightly personal style in the final stretch of his career.  The emotional force of the painting is increased by the use of contrasting colour and the style of the brushstroke.

El Greco organised the compositional space into two halves corresponding to the earthly and celestial realms.

The earthly realm contains few concrete references apart from the reading desk and various attributes of the Virgin. The spatial context of any elements of the room have disappeared and the air that envelops the figures has an unreal atmosphere. El Greco focused on the moment when Mary accepts the message of the Archangel, which crosses its hands on its breast in a gesture of veneration.

The upper half of the composition is filled with a cloud of glory in which a choir of musical angels playing instruments follow the directions of the one on the left who beats time, holding the score.

El Greco unites the earthly and celestial realms with a ray of light made up of cherubims' heads through which the dove of the Holy Spirit descends. 

Autumn is here

Autumn is here, and it's nowhere as obvious as by the sea. We went swimming in a completely empty beach the other day, and I got so cold that it took me ages to recover.

So today, we went to Edem for a sit down, a contemplation of the sea and a cup of tea. Not many people here either 

but it was very atmospheric. Hazy and threatening to rain, it all looked very mysterious and you could hardly see the horizon.

Walking back was amazing: so calm, and mysterious and just so beautiful 

 

20th century European Art

20th century European Art at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid.

Marc Chagall, Nude, 1913, (gouache on paper)

The geometry and dislocation of this naked male body come close to Cubism, while the vibrant colours recall Fauve painting. 

This nude has been linked to the figure of Nijinsky, the Ballets Russes greatest star, who introduced major choreographic innovations and revolutionised the academic conventions of ballet. This dislocated figure might be regarded as an exact pictorial equivalent.

Wassily Kandinsky, Picture with Three Spots, 1914

From the early 1910s onwards, Kandinsky turned his back on the depiction of the world of external appearances, embarking instead on the creation of wholly-abstract canvases, which led to his being hailed as the great pioneer of non-objective art. These works express his desire to create a pictorial equivalent of music, using a style capable of arousing emotions which - far removed from external realities - would become the expression of his inner strength. Here, the three large oval spots at the centre of the composition, surrounded by swirling shapes and bright colours, stress the religious symbolism of the number three and draw us into Kandinsky's personal universe of spiritual, mystical aspirations.

I have been to a lot of exhibitions where works by Kandinsky were featured. You can see some here

Wassily Kandinsky, In the Bright Oval, 1925, (oil on cardboard)

In the Bright Oval, which featured as number 313 on the painter's handwritten list, was painted in 1925. That year Kandinsky had finished the essay Point and Line to Plane developing his theories on the meaning of form and colour as autonomous elements within the composition. 

Kandinsky discussed the psychological repercussions of colours and the relationship between form and colour with his students at the Bauhaus, and taught them how to associate the three primary colours - red, yellow and blue - with the three basic geometric shapes: the triangle, the square and the circle. However, In the Bright Oval should not be regarded as a composition that experiments with certain geometric elements since, like many earlier paintings, it has an underlying cosmic meaning.

 

Egon Schiele, Houses on the River (The Old Town), 1914, (oil on canvas)

Like most of Schiele's urban landscapes, the composition lacks perspective and is designed as a flat frieze that has sometimes been related to the stained glass windows and Gothic miniatures that fascinated him and his contemporaries, the German Expressionists. The image of a deserted, spooky town with no trace of human life gives the composition a melancholic air infused with a certain anxiety - the anxiety that Schiele captured so successfully in his portraits. Indeed, Kemberly A. Smith considered these landscapes to be metaphors of the human condition or 'melancholic elegies exhibiting a readily perceptible fascination with death'.

I saw so many wonderful pieces by Schiele in Vienna, and you can see some  here  and here

I became a bit obssessed.

Edvard Munch, The Sick Child, 1896, (lithograph)

This painting is based on Munch's memories of his sister Sophie, who suffered from tuberculosis and died at the age of 15. He painted many versions of The Sick Child. He wanted to reproduce his impression of his dying sister - her pallid complexion and reddish hair against the white pillow. He tried to express something that was difficult to capture; the tired movement of the eyelids, the lips that seem to whisper, the little flicker of life that remains.

I saw quite a few of Munch's paintings in Stockholm - you can see some of them here

Franz Marc, The Dream, 1912, (oil on canvas)

No longer bound by the truthful representation of nature, yet without wholly relinquishing links to the real world, Marc highlights his awareness of Italian Futurist and French Cubist theories in this painting. The composition is structured around dynamic lines radiating outwards from the female figure in the foreground; naked and asleep, she becomes a symbol of the harmony between the human world and the animal realm. The varied creatures that surround her seem to be the product of her dream.

The scene takes place in the middle of the night, as indicated by the marked blackness of the background sky. The yellow house on the left may symbolise the real world, while the rest of the composition is occupied by the scene of the dream. The naked female figure in the centre, who sleeps seated with her legs crossed and surrounded by animals, is perhaps the symbol of harmony berween humans and the animal world. 

Marc's theories rejected the rigid ways of life in the city, and were focused on the permanent pursuit of freedom of expression through a mystic vision of the natural world and the creation of new symbols appropriate to a new spirituality. He aspired to create a new paradisiacal realm in which humans could achieve perfect harmony with nature. In this new Arcadia symbols took the form of a profusion of animals converted into mystic creatures imbued with allegories, which the artist himself referred to as the 'animalisation of art'.

Marc joined The Blue Rider community of artists which you can read about here

Auguste Macke, Circus, 1913, (oil on cardboard)

Three acrobats attend to a female rider who has had an accident. Her inert body is carried from the ring, while the horse that has caused the tragedy is led away. Closer to the foreground, a figure bending over in the shadows turns his back on the viewer in a sign of grief. In this work the circus reveals its dual nature, in which merriment can instantly transform itself into profound sadness and in which danger and death constantly lie in wait.

Macke's focus on the expressive value of colour was combined with a fragmented concept of space derived from Delaunay in works that became the German successors to that French painter's chromatic Cubism.

You can see more of Macke's work on Expressionism  here

Lyonel Feininger, The Lady in Mauve, 1922, (oil on canvas)

As in most of his compositions featuring human figures, Feininger adopts a very low viewpoint - a visual devide that enables him to enlarge the figure and extend the height of the buildings, which tower into the sky. He wrote: 'the slightest difference in relative proportions creates enormous differences with regard to the monumentality and intensity of the composition. Monumentality is not attained by making things larger - how childish! - but by contrasting large and small in the same composition'.

Wassily Kandinsky, Murnau. Top of the Johannisstrasse, 1908, (oil on cardboard)

Following Kandinsky's and Gabriele Munter's travels all over Europe, Munter bought a house in Murnau in 1909. The colourful rendering of the Johannisstrasse displays the influence of the Fauve paintings that Kandinsky had seen in Paris. It shows a view of the beginning of the street, and, on the right in the background, the facade of the Griesbrau Inn, where the couple always stayed and which still stands today.

You can see more of Kandinsky's work on the above link which is  here

Caspar David Friedrich, Easter Morning, 1928-35, (oil on canvas)

Friedrich is one of the leading exponents of Germasn Romantic painting. Throughout his life, he sought communion with nature as a means of expressing his feelings and ideas, his hopes and yearnings. Friedrich's landscapes are open to a profound religious interpretation. This one here, for instance, is imbued with a rich symbolism and everything has meaning: the moon and the dawn are symbolic of death and the hope of eternal life; the season chosen - late winter giving way to early spring - is linked to the Resurrection.

To see more of Friedrich's work go here

Ellados Eikones

We used to go Ellados Eikones quite often, but had not been since they relocated. We decided to give it a go the other day, and were not disappointed.

Down the stairs we went

had missed the sun going down, but the sky was ablaze

We were given a very good table - the view on our right

and the view on our left.

In its new location, Ellados Eikones functions as a restaurant Mondays to Wednesdays

and as a night club/restaurant with live music the rest of the week.

I understand that it gets very crowded at weekends, but on a weekday, early evening, it was blissfully quiet

We sat outside, of course

watching the sunset and the moon that had come out

As it got darker, the lights came on in Piraeus and on the island of Aegina across from us

It was perfect - and so peaceful

and then it was time to go...

 A 15-minute walk and we were home.

Three Van Gogh paintings at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum

Three Van Gogh paintings at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum.

Evening Landscape, 1885, (oil on canvas)

In April 1885, while concentrating on the series devoted to the Potato eaters, Van Gogh wrote to his brother, 'I am also working on a red sunset'. As in the portraits of country folk eating in a shadowy room, this landscape, which is almost norcturnal, allows him to paint the darkness he so admired in 17th century Netherlandish painting. In this first Dutch period which preceded his move to Paris, where his palette became more luminous and colourful owing to the influence of the new artistic trends that emerged around him, Van Gogh's style is characterised by a realism with strong tenebrist undertones.

The Stevedores in Arles, 1888, (oil on canvas)

When Van Gogh arrived in Arles in 1888 seeking the luminous atmosphere of the French Midi, he eschewed pointillist and Impressionist methods in favour of more synthetic forms and louder colours. The Stevedores in Arles, which clearly shows this stylistic change is painted with thick, elongated brushstrokes and marked colour contrasts. It shows a view of the Rhone with a blazing sunset in which the motifs of the composition - clearly influenced by Japanese art - stand out against the light. 

'I saw a magnificent and strange effect this evening', he wrote to his brother Theo. 'A very big boat loaded with coal on the Rhone, moored to the quay. Seen from above it was all shining and wet with a shower; the water was yellowish-white and clouded pearl gray; the sky, lilac with an orange streak in the west; the town, violet. On the boat some poor workmen in dirty blue and white came and went carrying the cargo on shore. It was pure Hokusai'.

Les Vessenots in Auvers, 1890, (oil on canvas)

This landscape of Les Vessenots, on the outskirts of Auvers, shows a group of old country cottages placed just below a raised horizon; further down, wheat fields stretch to the bottom of the canvas, broken only by a few swaying trees, The narrow colour range - mainly bright greens and yellows - and the nervous, agitated brushstrokes following a repetitive, undulating rhythm, are characteristic of the artist's work in his final period.

Van Gogh painted a large number of landscapes in the weeks before his death, always working outdoors. By that time, he was prey to all manner of conflicting moods: the vast expanses of fertile cropland gave him a sense of freedom, but at the same time intensified the feeling of melancholy and loneliness which would eventually lead to his suicide.

Paul Delvaux, The Viaduct

The Viaduct by Paul Delvaux at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid

Paul Delvaux, The Viaduct, 1963, (oil on canvas)

I love Delvaux's atmospheric paintings and rarely get the chance to see one, so I thought I would do a separate post on this one.

Evoking Delvaux's world without referring to trains is impossible, since it is a recurring theme in his work. Here he reveals himself as a painter of reality, of a meticulous reality. In Delvaux, no detail is left to chance, and each element is studied in depth. In fact, he ordered scale models of trains and trams which reigned over his studio, next to a skeleton, another important source of inspiration. That way, every time he wished to do so, he was able to copy them carefully and integrate them in his works.

The Viaduct is a very interesting piece, because it gathers in a single, very dense composition, all the elements which constitute the artist's world: the suspended lamps found in his childhood homes, the magical and unusual atmosphere of the stations at nightfall, the mysterious train passing and covering the horizon with its strange smoke, the mirror reflecting another world, another reality. Everything is fixed, inanimate, waiting for an event which does not take place. The work frightens and at the same time fascinates, since it is inhabited by poetry. The houses are lit, but no human being seems to live in them. No life animates this composition constructed like a theatrical scene. 

There is the foreground, with that strange mirror whose presence in a street or under a shelter, reminding us of a train station, is unreal; and the background scenery: a train passes and seems to float in the night sky. Such a particular world is made of simplicity and reality, but, due to the contrasts existing between the real elements and their anachronistic or unusual association, the artist creates unreality, daydream, poetry. Although all the elements of the painting are realistic, the image as a whole is not. Time no longer exists. 

Everything in the painting exists, everything has a name, everything is known by everybody and can be grasped by everyone, but Delvaux, like a magician, puts together things that usually are not, makes fun of time and space. With traditional materials, he creates what has been called  'the world of Delvaux' -  a world of poetry.

Women artists in the Reina Sofia Museum

Women artists at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia,  Madrid.  

I have no idea why there was this section in the museum's exhibits, as there are lots of women artists' work displayed around the museum. This small room had some works I really liked however, so I thought I would do a separate post on them, just as there was in the museum. 

Olga Sacharoff, Merry-go-round at the Fair, 1934

Eva Aggerholm, Head of a Young Woman, 1929

Angeles Santos, Self-Portrait, 1928

Rosario de Velasco, Untitled (The Children's Room), 1932-33

Angeles Santos, The Gathering, 1929

Maruja Mallo, The Fair, 1927

Delhy Tejero, Witches with Oil Lamps, 1932