5 Best Christmas Exhibits

Posted on December 2, 2012 by gemma

There is too much to see and too little time in this marvelous city! These Christmas do not miss…

       PALACIO DE CIBELES: “Casa Alba”.  Without a doubt this will be one of the major exhibitions of the year. Historically, The Dukes of Alba have been the largest art collectors after the Royal Dynasties in Spain. Their taste for art is exquisite, and their collection is wonderful, at least the minute part of it shown here. We fin Goyas’, Titians’, Ingres’, Rubens’, and Fra Angelico’s “Our Lady of Granada,” which according to the director of the MET is the painter’s best preserved work. Beyond paintings, we also have the opportunity to see incredible pieces like Christopher Columbus’ hand-written letters and the House of Alba’s Bible translated to three languages from the Hebrew Bible, held in the fifteenth century by the Jewish Rabbi Mose Arragel.

MUSEO THYSSEN: “Cartier”. The most beautiful historic pieces of the famous French jeweler are being exhibited at the Thyssen Museum. Cartier came to fame as the “King of Jewelers” during the Belle Époque for his beautifully made diamond and platinum jewelry created for the Courts of Europe and Americans of the Gilded Age. During the Art Deco era, Cartier fashioned some spectacular pieces for celebrities of the day, from the Duchess of Windsor to Jean Cocteau. My favorite is a stripped cigarette case and a matching lighter that belonged to the sister of the present Spain’s King.

FUNDACION ICO: “Ma Yansong “. The very young and award-winning architect of the ICO foundation is on exhibit. His projects are very interesting since they strength the artistic character of architecture without forgetting its sustainable social impact and the local tradition. A young artist who we will surely be talking a lot about in the XXI century.

FUNDACION JUAN MARCH: “Arte británico de Holbein a Hockney”. British art is quite unknown in Spain, with one exception the Fundacion Lázaro Galdiano’s portraits collection. That’s why this exhibition demonstrates the extraordinary scope and vitality of art in Great Britain since the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century through present day. The idea that lies behind the exhibition is to learn what occurred in the art world in Great Britain through five centuries of British art when we enquire into where it was and is instead of what it was and is. It’s curious that a considerable number of foreign artists made Great Britain their home and their place of work. For instance, look at John Singer Sargent’s portrait of a woman.

TELEFONICA: “Colección Cubista”.  The exhibition underscores the relevance of Juan Gris for Cubism, to my personal point of view more valuable than Picasso’s or Braque’s one. The artist is presented in all the diversity and complexity of his career, of his work with formats of diverse proportions and textures following his invention of plastic rhymes. Juan Gris is also the leading exponent of the new form of Cubism that emerged between 1916 and 1923.

Do not miss this unique opportunity!

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5 Best Autumn Art Museum Exhibits

Posted on November 22, 2012 by gemma

Madrid is well known for its art museums. While many permanent exhibits are world renown, the museums also treat us to excellent temporary exhibits.

Here are Madrid’s 5 best temporary exhibits to see till December 2012.

PALACIO REAL  “El Infante Don Luis.”

An interesting character, and Carlos III’s brother, Don Luis married a woman of lower social status and therefore was banished from the Court. He is obligated to live in a Palace in Avila   where some of the most interesting intellectuals of the era gathered. Goya could not resist visiting him and stays almost a month, making portraits of the family. Look for my favorite one, Maria Teresa de Borbón y Vallabriga, who was almost three years old… and later try to find her again in the rooms dedicated to Goya in the Prado Museum and discover what happened in her life.

FUNDACION MAPHRE: “Retratos del Pompidou.”

In the 20th century, contemporary artists defined their opposition to the “ideal beauty” of the classical eras, to show the imperfect, the unstable, and the fragmented.  I think that these ideas are perfectly reflected in Bacon’s self-portrait. Look for it.

REINASOFIA : “Encuentros en los años 30.”

Celebrating the arrival of Guernica masterpiece 30 years ago,this exhibition provides an overview of the artistic events that were happening in the world during the 30s, and thus influenced Picasso’s creation. The brutal impact of the wars during this period, the passage from European fascism, the democratization of photography, consciousness of abstract art, the rupture in the vanguards, were the beginning of  the future of contemporary art. My favorite is definitely Guernica.

MUSEO DEL PRADO :”El joven Van Dyck”

The Prado Museum seems to recently favor exhibitions focusing on the beginnings of the great geniuses careers. The unknown stage of the young Ribera, Rafael’s early years, the young Van Dyck … the latter, born the same year of Velazquez and pupil of Rubens (Velázquez who admires and even celebrates at the end of his life in The Spinners) tries to highlight his master and seek new and elegant forms of expression. I love his adolescent self-portrait.

MUSEO DEL ROMANTICISMO “ Eugenia de Motijo”

A good excuse to visit this wonderful museum is its fabulous coffee . Eugenia, after marrying Napoleon II, became Empress of France, intervening actively in public and political life, as well as becoming an important reference in the fashion world, making Paris the capital of luxury.

 

If you are an art lover then you won’t want to miss these spectacular pieces. Enjoy!

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5 paintings from Las Meninas series by Picasso that you should check out

Posted on October 18, 2012 by gemma

It is a particular pleasure for me to introduce the guest post of my colleague Marta Laurent the best tour guide in Barcelona. Barcelona has the dynamic and open personality so typical of Mediterranean cities. It is the perfect city to relax in, stroll around and enjoy. Barcelona has its own way of life which makes it unique…but remember, you need and expert as Marta.
In 1957 Picasso is living in a mansion near Cannes and he decides to shot himself in his workshop to work for months on a series of interpretations of the famous Las Meninas by Velázquez (which is one of the jewels of the Prado Museum in Madrid). 
Years earlier, while talking to his good friend Jaume Sabartés, he had said that if somebody started copying Las Meninas, at some point he’d be tempted changing a tiny little bit. But that little change would affect the whole painting and therefore a whole new Meninas would be the result. That’s what we can see in this series that is composed of some 50 paintings. Here are 5 selected works that you need to check out to understand this series in depth:
1.       Las Meninas (Overview). This is the largest painting of the series, and also the only one in black and white (maybe a little tribute to the black and white postcard that he used to get inspiration during the creation of the series). Picasso has here changed the orientation of the painting, moving from the original verticality to an interesting horizontal composition. He also opens the windows, that appear closed in Velázquez’s original. The white light that comes in through them illuminates the scene.
2.       Infanta Margarita Maria. The daughter of the king Phillip IV is the central character of the painting, and it also attracts the attention of Picasso, who dedicates to her a variety of paintings. Note how often the maid offering her a plate with a little vase is only present in her portraits as a hand holding these objects. Maybe a way to make us thing about the respect with which such a young child had to be treated due to her royal status.
3.       The Piano. Believe it or not, it belongs to the Meninas series: Picasso thought that the posture of Nicolasito Pertusato, the dwarf kicking the dog, looked like a piano payer, and displaying his fine sense of humor he decided to add the piano. Note how the piano player is still dressed in red, as the dwarf in Las Meninas, and there is still a dog in the painting.
4.       Pigeons. Another surprising theme also belonging to the series. After weeks of being enclosed in his workshop painting Meninas over and over again, he opened the window of his workshop and painted the pigeon cages and the Cannes bay that he could see from there. Somehow, it feels like being a character of Picasso’s Meninas approaching the windows he has opened and showing us the landscape. A way to add nature and outdoors to the masterpiece…
5.       Portrait of Jaqueline. That’s the second “free interpretation” of Las Meninas, together with the Piano. The view of large paintings at the back of the room painted by Velazquez inspired Picasso to paint a painting of a painting: the portrait of his last wife Jacqueline Roque, presented as a painting itself, as he painted a yellow frame around it.
Marta is the founder of Foreverbarcelona Tours and has been giving private tours of Barcelona since 2000. She’s passionate about her city and one of the top guides there. She loves taking her guests to the Picasso museum and unveiling for them the less famous periods of the life and works of the artist.
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Thyssen Boremisza “Gauguin and the voayage to the exotic”

Posted on October 8, 2012 by gemma

Today the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum celebrates its 20th anniversary. 
 
Thank you for bringing art to our lives!
A new exibition ” Gauguin y el viaje a lo exótico “ starts tomorrow and will focus on the results of the artistic explorations undertaken by artists including Gauguin, Matisse, Kandinsky, Klee and Macke. It will also look at Gauguin’s influence on the German Expressionists and the French Fauves, emphasising his role as the creator of a new and exotic canon, the starting point for the avant-garde artistic idioms that arose in the early decades of the 20th century.
 Más información sobre Gauguin y el viaje a lo exótico
Artists started to acquire an interest in traveling to distant lands at the end of the 19thcentury as a result of the romantic passion for adventure. What had until then been the obligatory Grand Tour was now completed with a trip to North Africa, and the exotic began to be a new way of confronting life. Gaugin is a prime representative of the ineluctable longing for recovered innocence which marks the 19th century. 
Open from Oct 9 to January 13.
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A dialogue between Cardinal and the Countess

Posted on June 25, 2012 by gemma

The picture of this lady from the Renaissance period was given as a gift to Francis I, King of France, by Cardinal Bibbiena, on behalf of the Medici Pope Leo X, who had earlier instructed Raphael to do several religious painting in order to give them to the monarchs with the intention of persuading the monarchs to join in the war with the Turks.
When you first enter into the last room of the exhibition, you are faced with the Portrait of Cardinal Bibbiena and this delicate lady. One of the first things you might notice is how the two are positioned within the portrait, it looks as though one the two are talking to each other.  Why did the Cardinal choose this portrait to give to the King?
Bibbiena was an educated manand was sent by the Pope to the French court for the same reason. He realized that he liked Francisco´s portraits of women (it is possible that he bought Leonardo´s work of the Mona Lisa) and for that reason he commissioned a portrait of a beautiful lady that would play favorably with the rest of the female portraits in the royal collection. He thought that this piece would perfectly to complete the king´s collection
Who was this beautiful woman, sung by the poets of her time and whose beauty continues to capture our attention?
Isabel de Requesens and Enriquez (1498-1534 other dates 1500-1539) who was the Countess of Palamos, wife of Don Ramon Cardona, viceroy of Naples and the two Sicilies and main supporter of the interests of Spain in Italy. She was the daughter of Bernat Galcerán Requesens, Earl of Palamos, Catalunya Spain. At eight year of age she was orphaned and heiress of numerous titles and considerable wealth. As was customary of the time, relatives rushed to marry her. The lucky winner was her cousin, Ramón Folch de Cardona III, who was the Anglesola and Baron of Bellpuig, He was thirty years older than the Countess and there was the suspicions that he was the bastard son of The Catholic King Ferdinand I. Despite this suspicious, Ramón came from a very important Catalonian family in the sixteenth-century and was the official Anglesola Cardona and Baron of Bellpuig. He was the founder in 1507 of the Convent of St. Bartholomew in Bellpuig, flamboyant gothic jewel of Renaissance in the county of Urgell.Michale P. Fritz, a Swiss art historian,

professor at the University of Freiburg, reveals the story of this painting in a book published in 1997 by the Department of the Louvre painting entitled “The Virreina of Naples”.  He explains that there was a mistake, as in the Louvre had confused this lady with Joan of Aragon.

This masterpiece has captured the attention of many people over the centuries including one philosopher, poet and art critic during the nineteenth century, Theophile Gautier.  One day, walking throughout the Louvre he stood in front of the portrait and said, ¨I feel jealous of the husband of this beauty¨. Fritz tells us that the lucky husband had two beauties in his life, Isabel and a lover, Eleonora Brogna. Elenoroa was the bridesmaid of Isabel d’Este “whose beauty did not detracted from that of the viceroy “and who was curiously introduced by Isabel to Ramón 1512.

The city of Naples celebrated Isabel´s beauty and characters like the condottiere Francesco d’Avalos, husband of Vittoria Colonna, was smitten with her. There is an anecdote that during a dinner party for Vittoria, her husband put a beautiful pearl necklace on Isabel ( the next day Elizabeth was quick to return to Vittoria Colonna  ).Although he was in love with his wife, this story displays the ¨crush¨ that many men in Naples had towards Isabel
No doubt, by the testimony of his contemporaries, that Elizabeth was a great lady who wowed Naples and a great patron of the arts, contributing decisively to the success of their drive against the late Gothic Revival. In her personal life, we know she was widowed in 1522 at the age of twenty-two, and she continued to live in Naples until 1532. Isabel died in 1534 or 1539 and was buried in the church of Santa Anunziatta Neapolitan tomb which disappeared in a fire in 1757.Vasari in his “Life of great artists,” writes Raphael painted only the head, the natural and the rest of the picture was  his favorite disciple, Giulio Romano. The scene takes place in 1518, perhaps in the villa of Agostino Chigi in Rome or in the village of Poggio Reale in Naples.

 The picture is important because it opens a genre, called “Portrait of chamber” which will have many followers and will reach its full splendor with Titian and Velázquez. So many copies were made that are now scattered throughout different palaces in Europe. Alfonso d’Este Duke of Ferrara commissioned Raphael to make him a copy of a German princess wearing the same dress as Isabel in this portrait.
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