Spanish Art and Architecture in the 20 th Century

What do you know about art and architecture from Spain in the 20 th Century?

Agenda Question of the Day Group Work – Analyzing Art Brief Lecture Explain Homework

Group Work Questions What are some things you notice about the painting or structure? Is there anything that stands out to you in this painting or structure? Do you like the painting or the structure? Why or why not? Can you sense or feel any emotion based off of the painting/structure?

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 Toulouse-Lautrec, 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 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 crystal-ized into the disturbing blend of precise realism and dream- like fantasy that became his trade- mark. Dalí often de- scribed his pictures as “ hand-painted dream photographs ” and had certain favorite and recur- ring images, such as the human figure with half- open drawers protruding from it, burning giraffes, and watches bent and flowing as if made from melting wax. This painting is called Woman with Drawers.

Swans Reflecting Elephants – On display at the Dalí museum in Paris.

Dalí ’ s most famous painting is called The Persistence of Memory.