Spanish Art
Artists
El Greco
Diego Velázquez
Francisco de Goya
Pablo Picasso
Salvador Dalí
El Greco
El Greco was born in 1541 on
the Greek island of Crete. His
real name is Domenikos
Theotocopoulos; the name by
which he is universally known,
El Greco, means “the Greek.”
Little is known of his younger
years. When he was in his
20s, he spent time studying
with Italian artists in Venice
and Rome. Most of his works
consist of religious paintings
and portraits.
This is El Greco’s self-portrait.
In 1577 El Greco moved
to Spain. He settled in
Toledo and spent the rest
of his life there. Many of
his paintings are still
located in Toledo,
although the Prado also
houses quite a few. The
painting here is wellknown and is called The
Burial of Count Orgaz. It
hangs in the Church of
San Tomé in Toledo.
While El Greco, unlike
most other Spanish
artists, probably doesn’t
have a single painting for
which he is best known,
he does have a distinctive
style. Notice the
elongated face and
fingers in this painting,
entitled The Repentant
Peter.
Diego Velázquez
Diego Velázquez, born in
Seville in 1599, was a
more conventional painter
than most of the other
well-known Spanish
artists. At the age of 11
or 12, he was apprenticed
to a master painter, and
at the age of 18 he
became qualified as a
master painter himself.
During his youth he did
religious paintings and a
type of scene paintings
called “bodegones.” At
the age of 24 he became
court painter, and from
then on he became
known for his portraits.
He remained a court
favorite for the rest of his
life. His most famous
painting, Las Meninas
(“The Maids of Honor”),
hangs in the Prado in
Madrid.
Francisco de Goya
Francisco de Goya,
frequently called “the
father of modern art,” was
born in a village in the
province of Zaragoza in
1746. Goya followed a
more traditional path than
Dalí and Picasso. As a
teenager, he entered the
service of a local artist.
He later enrolled in the
royal academy and then
became the court painter.
Later, however, he
became disillusioned with
the vanity of court life,
and his paintings became
darker and more violent.
In 1808 Spaniards rose
up against French
domination, and many
were executed. Goya’s
most famous painting is
called El 2 de mayo.
When he was in his
70s, he became very
ill, and after he
recovered, his works
became even darker.
His most famous work
from that period is
Saturn Devouring
One of His Children.
Goya died in 1828.
Pablo Picasso
Picasso, born in Málaga
in 1881, was a rebel from
the start and, as a
teenager, began to
frequent the Barcelona
cafés where intellectuals
gathered. He soon went
to Paris, the capital of art,
and soaked up the works
of Manet, Gustave
Courbet, and ToulouseLautrec, whose sketchy
style impressed him
greatly.
Picasso went through several
periods before striking upon
Cubism, the style for which he
is best known. Cubism is
essentially the fragmenting of
three-dimensional forms into
flat areas of pattern and color,
overlapping and intertwining so
that shapes and parts of the
human anatomy are seen from
the front and back at the same
time.
This painting is called Portrait de
Ambroise Vollard.
The bombing that resulted
in the total destruction of the
town of Guernica during
Spain’s 1936-1939 civil war
is the subject of Picasso’s
best-known work, entitled
simply Guernica. Picasso,
completely opposed to
Franco (dictator from 1937
until his death in 1975),
refused to allow his painting
into Spain as long as
Franco lived. For years it
was housed in New York’s
Museum of Modern Art, but
now it’s in the Reina Sofia
museum in Madrid.
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Dalí was born in
1904 in Figueras, Spain,
a small town about two
hours from Barcelona in
the province of Catalonia.
Although Dalí excelled in
his academic pursuits, he
never took final
examinations, deeming
that he had no need for
the type of education
offered by formal
schooling.
Dalí came under the influence
of two forces that shaped his
philosophy and his art. The
first was Sigmund Freud's
theory of the unconscious,
introduced to Dalí in Freud's
book The Interpretation of
Dreams. The second was his
association with the French
surrealists. When Dalí visited
Paris for the first time, he was
introduced to the leading
surrealists in the movement,
but because of his lack of
interest in politics, he was
eventually shunned by this
group.
Under the influence of the
surrealist movement,
Dalí's artistic style crystalized into the disturbing
blend of precise realism
and dream-like fantasy
that became his trademark. Dalí often described his pictures as
“hand-painted dream
photographs” and had
certain favorite and recurring images, such as the
human figure with halfopen drawers protruding
from it, burning giraffes,
and watches bent and
flowing as if made from
melting wax.
This painting is called Woman
with Drawers.
My personal favorite
is Swans Reflecting
Elephants, which is
on display at the Dalí
museum in Paris.
Dalí’s most
famous
painting is
called The
Persistence of
Memory.