Spanish Sketches: New Selection

Author: Liu Tiancheng, Editor-in-Chief
Publisher:
Publish Date: 1999-06-01
Features: Spain is a small and medium-sized country. Since the Renaissance, it has produced a series of world-renowned painting masters—El Greco, Ribera, Velázquez, Goya, and others. Just the city of Barcelona has given birth to three globally celebrated modern painting giants: Picasso, Miró, and Dalí. From ancient times to the present, each master has shone brilliantly in world art history, demonstrating their immortal existence value and independent personal strength. Perhaps the Spanish nation possesses a genetic predisposition to artistic talent. For example, the Altamira Cave, discovered in 1879, "stores" cave paintings from 20,000 years ago, with the cave ceiling adorned with variously shaped, lifelike wild bulls, reindeer, goats, wild pigs, and wolves—some roaring, others lying still. The ancients used charcoal to draw lines and mixed animal fat with mineral pigments for coloring. It is hard to imagine that primitive humans possessed such sophisticated aesthetic awareness and modeling skills, with observation abilities and realistic rendering techniques that rival those of modern artists! This is a typical example of prehistoric art that has gained worldwide fame. Western scholars humorously refer to the Altamira Cave as the "Sistine Chapel of Prehistoric Wall Paintings." National style is the lifeblood of art. Spain is a nation of courage, strength, fierceness, romance, and elegance. Its passionate and unrestrained dances, music, and the thrilling spectacle of bullfighting, where the brave defy danger and inspire cheers, fully convey the realm of its plastic arts. Its unique national character has shaped the artistic styles of music, dance, and even literature, which in turn naturally extend to painting. Spanish painting is marked by a bold spirit of innovation. As early as the early 17th century, El Greco (1541–1614) pioneered a new style of distorted painting. He elongated figures and created compositions and colors that diverged from reality, expressing subjective spirit between the real and the surreal to create a mysterious religious world. This Greek-born Spanish artist can be considered the first master of distorted painting in art history. Francisco José de Goya (1746–1828) was a great painter after Diego Velázquez (1599–1600), often hailed as the "father of oil painting." He was a pioneer of European Romantic painting. With his unique artistic language imbued with the spirit of the times, he spoke his heart to reality, pursuing a sense of vast historical depth. His works are dominated by heroic, passionate, soaring, and even tragic emotions. In the 18th century, Goya pushed the boundaries of innovation in oil and pencil drawings, displaying a flamboyant technique with bold, spirited brushstrokes and lines and colors that were particularly expansive and fluid. His forms were sharp and rugged, realistically depicting the harsh realities of human existence. Goya was an outstanding draftsman, and his series "The Wars and Disasters" is a famous pencil masterpiece. Its rough, exaggerated, and natural artistic effect already shows tendencies of Expressionism. Unfortunately, we rarely see pencil works by the great masters El Greco and Velázquez. Among the Spanish masters, Dalí is a remarkable genius who has had the greatest and most enduring influence in surrealism. His realistic pencil drawings are exceptionally precise, and many of his figure studies and sketches for creative works hold unique aesthetic value. This highly talented nation has continuously produced world-renowned painting masters, like towering peaks. One may not know the king of Spain, but everyone knows the great genius painter Picasso. Spanish art became one of the world's artistic peaks between the 16th and 18th centuries and reached the pinnacle of modernism in the 20th century, with Picasso, Miró, and Dalí as typical representatives. Spain is a small country, but since the 16th century, its art has consistently been one of the world's artistic peaks. It has not only El Greco, Ribera, Velázquez, and Goya but also geniuses like Picasso, Miró, and Dalí, whose pencil art has also had a profound influence. This book collects over 120 representative Spanish pencil drawings, including 53 by Picasso, 36 by Brevo, and 31 by Naranco. The selected pencil drawings by Picasso are from his youth before 1907, including creative sketches. Picasso's pencil art is characterized by its perfect execution, relying on solid skills and rich imagination. His brushwork is effortless, as if the air flows or birds fly, pure and natural. Naranco is a highly acclaimed contemporary Spanish artist. His extensive paintings reflect the artist's unique personality and creative spirit, as well as his continuous growth toward perfection. He excels at pencil drawings on wood, creating a different artistic effect from paper sketches. His lines are sharp and incised, with richer tones; in his soft and ethereal expressions, he achieves a misty and elegant beauty that paper sketches cannot match. Brevo's pencil drawings resemble his oil paintings in style—precise yet concise, rich yet simple. Simplicity and complexity are no great distance apart, but the difference between subtlety and cloyingness is just a hair's breadth. Brevo's paintings are highly refined yet free of cloyingness, which is the most difficult boundary to master.