Art-to-Art Palette Journal

Stops only once in the USA

NM: Santa Fe

WHERE: New Mexico Museum of Art.

WHEN: On view through March 9, 2014.

TITLE: Renaissance to Goya: Prints and Drawings from Spain

“The Blind Guitarist”, 1788 by Francisco Goya (1746-1828), print, 390 x 570 mm.

BRIEF ABOUT: As the only American venue for this exhibition, it will begin with some of the foreign artists who worked in Spain, such as the Italians Pellegrino Tibaldi and Frederico Zuccaro. These rare and precious pieces of paper bear witness to the internationalism of the 16th century and to the 17th century development of independent artistic centers in Madrid and Granada, Seville and Cordoba, and Valencia/Naples that brought about the “golden age” of Spanish art, the elegant years of the Bourbon court, and finally the horrors of the Napoleonic Peninsula War.

“Head of a monk”, 1625-64 by Francisco de Zurbarán (1598-1664), drawing, 277 x 196 mm.

     Renaissance to Goya moves through the centuries ending with Goya and his contemporaries, including them Tiepolo family who arrived in Madrid in the 1760s and whose etchings revolutionized printmaking in Madrid. The selections of Goya’s work demonstrate the huge range of his graphic ability and the subjects that absorbed him. Much has been written of Goya’s “lone genius” but this exhibition will explore how his art should be seen in the context of the unprecedented scientific, social, and artistic developments that were taking place in Spain the rest of Europe during the 18th and early 19th centuries.

     There are 132 drawings and prints, visitors are offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to gain insight into four centuries of Spain’s visual culture and history. Among the artists included are Velazquez, Murillo, Zurbáran, Ribera and above all Goya whose full range is represented in 26 works. As one London reviewer pointed out, “All the great themes of Iberian culture are here: religious fervor, dramatic passion bordering on violence and, of course bullfighting.” (Time Out, September 21, 2102).

MORE DETAILS: Mary Kershaw, Director, New Mexico Museum of Art at 505.476.5073 or email: mary.kershaw@state.nm.us.

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