At the Met, a rare look at the artist’s development over many decades
How did El Greco move from painting icons on the island of Crete to the elongated, expressionist works that made him famous and influenced artists like Pablo Picasso and Paul Cézanne ? To mark the 400th anniversary of the artist’s death, three New York City museums are trying to provide an answer.
On Tuesday, the Metropolitan Museum of Art will bring out its nine El Greco paintings as well as another six lent from the Hispanic Society. Several blocks away, the Frick Collection will display its three El Grecos side by side.
His canvases inspired artists at the turn of the last century, from Édouard Manet to German expressionists. “Many of them were seeking a kind of sanction and precedent for their own breakaway from naturalism, in the direction of emotional expression and an arbitrary handling of reality,” said Walter Liedtke, who curated the Met’s show. Picasso painted open and indirect homages.
As examples of El Greco’s career spanning nearly 50 years, “there are fairly personal portraits to more formal, religious works, from small devotional pictures to altarpieces,” said Mr. Liedtke.
As a young man, El Greco moved to Venice, which then controlled Crete. He was a disciple of Venice’s celebrated Titian. In the city, El Greco likely completed “The Miracle of Christ Healing the Blind,” one of the Met’s earliest works by him, then moved to Rome in 1570. There, he saw Michelangelo ’s Sistine Chapel and his detailed capturing of anatomy and drapery. That naturalism echoes in many of El Greco’s earlier works, such as a 1570s “Pietà,” from the Hispanic Society’s collection.
In Toledo, Spain, where El Greco lived for nearly 40 years until his death, he refined the theatrical style that he is best known for. Two pictures at the Met provide fine examples. El Greco painted a dark sky pierced by white lightning in the famous “View of Toledo,” his only surviving landscape. His unfinished “Vision of Saint John” depicts the tall saint at the left of the canvas, with much smaller figures standing next to him. The change in proportion evokes late medieval and Byzantine traditions.
El Greco “ends up in the right place,” Mr. Liedtke said of Toledo, a former capital that was still regarded as a traditional holy city. “It took moving to a much more traditional country, where spirituality and religious pictures were referring to otherworldly visions.”
El Greco (Domenikos Theotokopoulos) (Greek, 1540/41–1614) | The Vision of Saint John | ca. 1609–14
「エル・グレコ展」１０月から 国内最大規模の回顧展
  「エル・グレコ展」の記者発表会に登場したサポーターの俳優・森口瑤子さん＝１５日午後４時６分、東京・六本木のスペイン大使館、早坂元興撮影 |
１６～１７世紀のスペイン美術黄金期の巨匠、エル・グレコの油彩５０点以上を紹介する国内最大の回顧展「エル・グレコ展」（朝日新聞社など主催）の記者発表会が１５日、東京都港区のスペイン大使館であった。
独特の人物表現と幻想的な色彩感覚による肖像画や宗教画が世界中から集結。同展サポーターの女優、森口瑤子さんは「炎のように立ち上るマリア様が描かれた３メートル以上もある大作の『無原罪のお宿り』をぜひ見てみたい」と話した。
同展を監修する富山県立近代美術館の雪山行二館長による出品作の説明のほか、多くのエル・グレコの作品が残るスペインの古都トレドを紹介する映像も流された。
大阪・中之島の国立国際美術館で１０月１６日～１２月２４日、東京・上野の東京都美術館で来年１月１９日～４月７日に開催される。
El Greco, born Doménikos Theotokópoulos, (1541 – 7 April 1614) was a painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. "El Greco" (The Greek) was a nickname,[a][b] a reference to his ethnic Greek origin, and the artist normally signed his paintings with his full birth name in Greek letters, Δομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος (Doménikos Theotokópoulos), often adding the word Κρής (Krēs, "Cretan").
El Greco was born on Crete, which was at that time part of the Republic of Venice, and the centre of Post-Byzantine art. He trained and became a master within that tradition before travelling at age 26 to Venice, as other Greek artists had done.[2] In 1570 he moved to Rome, where he opened a workshop and executed a series of works. During his stay in Italy, El Greco enriched his style with elements of Mannerism and of the Venetian Renaissance. In 1577, he moved to Toledo, Spain, where he lived and worked until his death. In Toledo, El Greco received several major commissions and produced his best-known paintings.
El Greco's dramatic and expressionistic style was met with puzzlement by his contemporaries but found appreciation in the 20th century. El Greco is regarded as a precursor of both Expressionism and Cubism, while his personality and works were a source of inspiration for poets and writers such as Rainer Maria Rilke and Nikos Kazantzakis. El Greco has been characterized by modern scholars as an artist so individual that he belongs to no conventional school.[3] He is best known for tortuously elongated figures and often fantastic or phantasmagorical pigmentation, marrying Byzantine traditions with those of Western painting.[4]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_greco
独特の人物表現と幻想的な色彩感覚による肖像画や宗教画が世界中から集結。同展サポーターの女優、森口瑤子さんは「炎のように立ち上るマリア様が描かれた３メートル以上もある大作の『無原罪のお宿り』をぜひ見てみたい」と話した。
同展を監修する富山県立近代美術館の雪山行二館長による出品作の説明のほか、多くのエル・グレコの作品が残るスペインの古都トレドを紹介する映像も流された。
大阪・中之島の国立国際美術館で１０月１６日～１２月２４日、東京・上野の東京都美術館で来年１月１９日～４月７日に開催される。
El Greco, born Doménikos Theotokópoulos, (1541 – 7 April 1614) was a painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. "El Greco" (The Greek) was a nickname,[a][b] a reference to his ethnic Greek origin, and the artist normally signed his paintings with his full birth name in Greek letters, Δομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος (Doménikos Theotokópoulos), often adding the word Κρής (Krēs, "Cretan").
El Greco was born on Crete, which was at that time part of the Republic of Venice, and the centre of Post-Byzantine art. He trained and became a master within that tradition before travelling at age 26 to Venice, as other Greek artists had done.[2] In 1570 he moved to Rome, where he opened a workshop and executed a series of works. During his stay in Italy, El Greco enriched his style with elements of Mannerism and of the Venetian Renaissance. In 1577, he moved to Toledo, Spain, where he lived and worked until his death. In Toledo, El Greco received several major commissions and produced his best-known paintings.
El Greco's dramatic and expressionistic style was met with puzzlement by his contemporaries but found appreciation in the 20th century. El Greco is regarded as a precursor of both Expressionism and Cubism, while his personality and works were a source of inspiration for poets and writers such as Rainer Maria Rilke and Nikos Kazantzakis. El Greco has been characterized by modern scholars as an artist so individual that he belongs to no conventional school.[3] He is best known for tortuously elongated figures and often fantastic or phantasmagorical pigmentation, marrying Byzantine traditions with those of Western painting.[4]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_greco
