On Black Friday when most people hit malls for their holiday shopping I had a museum spree. My first stop was “Spanish Painting from El Greco to Picasso: Time, Truth, and History” exhibition in Guggenheim museum.

Instead of usual retrospective of work of Spanish masters, the exhibition was more of the analysis of the influence of Spanish “Golden Age” artists such as Zurbarбn, Velбzquez, Murillo and El Greco on Spanish modernists starting with Goya and following with Picasso, Dali and Gris. Looking on paintings by Dali or Picasso it’s hard to imagine connection with artists of 16-17 centuries, however curators of this show managed to do just that placing paintings of the artists belonging to different eras and having absolutely different styles next to each other. To support their intentions the exhibition is organized thematically instead of usual chronological order.

There are several themes, some are pretty ordinary: still lives, portraiture, landscapes, nudes; some are less conventional – monsters and dwarves, virgins, mothers and children.

The only obvious influence that you would expect from old school would be El Greco. He was considered inspiration for cubism and even abstractionism for many years. His colors and almost geometrical renderings of bodies and nature give his work “flatness” that is considered a goal of “pure” art or abstraction. So in landscape section of exhibition (which is very atypical for Spanish art) you would see El Greco next to Picasso with both paintings having similar colors and “cubistic” feel.

My personal discovery was 17^th century great “bodegones” artist - Juan Sanchez Cotan. “Bodegones” are things of pantry and are objects of Spanish still lives. Cotan’s paintings are mesmerizing. I never thought that I could be taken by still live, but he was a master of genre and the only other still life artist that had that effect on me was French painter Chardin. However, Chardin’s approach was more naturalistic; Cotan, in his turn, used math in his work and therefore his still lives look very modern, almost two-dimensional. Looking at his paintings next to cubists still lives by Juan Gris or Picasso you see how much of Cotan is in them even though both Gris and Picasso are considered pioneers of modern art who broke with “traditional” style.

Going further we would see pair of portraits that look like twins from different worlds: one is of “Francisco Pacheco” by Velazquez and another of “Jaime Sabartйs” by Picasso. There are many more portraits of men, women and children by old masters next to contemporary ones where influence on the latest is hard to ignore.

One of such examples is “The Virgin of the Rosary” by Murillo and Madonna of Port Lligat by Dali. Modern artists normally don’t “spoil” us with religious motives in their paintings but wild imagination of Dali is an exception and we can see his wife Gala as Madonna with borrowings from classical depiction of religious subjects but with “surreal” twist. I actually was surprised by public perception of these two paintings. Dali’s painting is relatively small but had a huge audience in front of it and Murillo’s truly magnificent large painting with amazing colors was abandoned by viewers. I’m not sure if Dali would have been happy if he knew that his art became “POP”.  

Another interesting thing was depiction of children. Children were considered undeveloped adults before Age of Enlightenment and were usually depicted with “grandpa” facial expressions in awkward positions. We can see it in Velazquez paintings of royal children. In a contrast, in Goya’s paintings influenced by ideas of Enlightenment we see softness in children typical to 20^th century realism. Nevertheless, in Picasso’s child portrait we see that awkwardness of depiction of body and face grimace that remind more of Velasquez than of Goya.

I have seen a lot of art by Spanish artists before, so for me personally the highlights of the exhibition were abundance of Velazquez and Goya paintings, including one of my favorites, Portrait of the Duchess of Alba and Corrida scenes. The only disappointment was that Velazquez “Las Meninas” didn’t make it here, however there were his famous portraits of dwarves and royalty (some traveled from Prado). So, if you did not see this wonderful exhibition yet, I really recommend going before it closes on March 28^th.