Left: El Greco
A Gentleman with his Hand on his Chest, c.1580
Oil on canvas, 82 x 66 cm
Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado
Right: Amedeo Modigliani
Paul Alexandre in front of a stained Window, 1913
Oil on canvas, 81 x 45.6 cm
Ruan, Musée des Beaux-Arts. Don Blaise et Philippe Alexandre, 1988
El Greco
Laocoön, 1610-1614
Oil on canvas, 142×193 cm
National Gallery of Art Washington, D.C.
El Greco and Modern Painting at the Prado Museum On view at the Prado Museum from June 24 to October 5, 2014, ‘El Greco and Modern Painting’ offers a comprehensive analysis of the artist’s influence on the development of modern painting.]]>
Source: Museo del Prado, Madrid
‘El Greco and Modern Painting’ includes around 120 works that reveal the decisive influence which El Greco had on the origins of modern painting. Among the works on display are the artist’s “Laocoön” and “The Vision of Saint John”, both loaned from the United States and not included in the recent exhibition in Toledo, Picasso’s “The Burial of Casagemas” and Cézanne’s interpretation of “Lady in an Ermine Wrap”, to be seen in Spain for the first time.
The exhibition’s eight sections reveal the complexity and range of El Greco’s influence, starting with the enormous interest that he aroused among the most innovative French painters such as Manet and Cézanne and among leading Spanish painters such as Rusiñol and Zuloaga, among others. The exhibition also analyses the artist’s ongoing influence on Pablo Picasso, the key figure in the creation of the numerous trends that revolutionised the visual arts in the 20th century. Also on display are works by other artists associated with Cubism who evolved towards other approaches, including André Derain, Robert Delaunay, Diego Rivera and Amedeo Modigliani.
The inclusion of books on El Greco that helped to extend knowledge of his work by authors such as Manuel Bartolomé Cossío, August Mayer, Julius Meier-Graefe and Maurice Barrés will allow visitors to appreciate how the rediscovery of El Greco and his oeuvre inspired modern painters.
Expressionists such as Beckmann, Macke and Kokoschka, Jewish artists of the School of Paris such as Soutine and Chagall and the poetic Surrealism of Masson and Domínguez are all represented in the exhibition through works that clearly reveal El Greco’s influence.
Related content
El Greco and Modernism – Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf (exhibition, 2012)
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