By Mckayla Robinson and Anne Collins
The art in Spain is a culture of its own. Unique and beautiful, this art has influenced other artists and works of art around the world. Many Spaniards will tell you it’s the best art in the world.
“The Prado is the best museum in the world. All the Spanish art in the Louvre was stolen from us by Napoleon,” said Luis Peinador, a street bookstore owner in Madrid.
During the Spanish Renaissance in the 16th-century much of the focus on art included religious subject matter. This had to do with the fact that the church was a major patron of the arts, according to DonQuijote.org.
The time in which Spanish art truly flourished was during the Golden Age in the 17th-century. Here, artists like El Greco, Jusepe de Ribera and Diego Velázquez emerged.
Velázquez used dark and light tones and this later impressed painters such as Edouard Manet.
According to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Manet greatly admired seventeenth-century Spanish painting. His work, “Monk in Prayer”, found in the Boston MFA, is said to have been influenced by Zurbarán’s “Kneeling Monk”, which he could have seen in the Louvre.
Many other artists have found inspiration in Spanish art and the works of Velázquez, including Spaniard Diego Ortega. Ortega sat painting a copy of Velázquez’s “Portrait of Mariana of Austria” one Monday in May in the Prado Museum in Madrid.
Ortega stated Velázquez is a painter he can learn a lot from. However, he said it’s a challenge to copy his paintings realistically.
Sculptor Antonio Azzato was also influenced by Velázquez’s work. According to Culture Trip, Azzato made over 80 street installations representing the famous work “Las Meninas,” which can be found in the Prado Museum. The statues were then decorated by a group of fashion designers, artists and singers.
Culture Trip reports that Azzato wanted to do this project because of “the necessity for art to be out on the streets.”
“The best way to become interested in art is to touch it and feel it,” he said.
From the coordinated “Las Meninas” project to individual performers and artists, street art can be found anywhere in Spain.
Opposite to Azzato’s concept of touching and feeling art, Ortega mentioned the grandeur of Spanish art reflected in museums such as the Prado.
“The characteristics of Spanish art don’t exist in the rest of the world,” Ortega said.
“Realism is used to present things how they are and exemplify the brutality of life.”
Ortega stated the Golden Age of art in Spain was one of the best.
“I like all art. But when it comes to painting, Spain is above all others during the Golden Age. Nothing can compare to the Golden Age in Spain. There was such a high level of painting- Velazquez, Murillo, El Greco. This was a time of artists that was unlike anything else, even in Italy,” Ortega said.
Towards the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th-century emerged another artist named Francisco Goya.
Goya painted some pieces for monarchy, but later moved into a darker phase. The paintings during the darker phase, which was later in his life, are termed The Black Paintings. These paintings are different from what was seen in Spanish art at the time.
“He’s weird. Which is basically why I like it. It’s different, it stands out. Especially for the time,” said John Weaver, an American from California who studied Spanish Literature in Spain when he was in college and participated in a study abroad to Spain.
Weaver talked about why Goya’s art is so unique.
“Since I studied Spanish literature, basically Spanish literature started to go into a black hole with the Inquisition, with tight control and censorship,” Weaver said. “Everything had to have a religious basis. [The artists] started to break out of that. Especially this guy (Goya). He was just bizarre.”
One painting done by Goya, “Saturn Devouring His Son”, particularly stood out to Weaver.
“Psychologically, there must have been something twisted with that guy,” Weaver said.
“That guy was just imbalanced, I think. And he expressed himself through his paintings. There’s something so dark. But it seems part of his personality poured out in these paintings.”
Whether it be the “dark and twisted” works of Goya or the high level of painting found in the Golden Age which Ortega described as “unlike anything else”, there is much to be learned and experienced from admiring Spanish art.
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