The Gemäldegalerie Berlin opens tomorrow with “The Golden Age. The era Velázquez” one of the star signs of the year in the German capital, with more than 135 works that illustrate the diversity and splendor of painting and sculpture Spanish seventeenth century.
The exhibition includes works by the gallery itself which has one of the most important collections of Spanish art of Germany and loans from 64 museums, institutions and private collections abroad, from the Prado Museum in Madrid, the Metropolitan in New York, the Louvre in Paris or the National Sculpture Museum of Valladolid.
As told Spanish media on a previous tour of the exhibition Maria Lopez-Fanjul, curator with Roberto Contini, visitors will discover in Berlin that the seventeenth century is characterized by “the breadth of topics, techniques and great teachers. ”
observers verify also that there are “many other names that deserve to be in the front line”, beyond Velazquez and El Greco, and that art is not only painting, but also sculpture, drawing , literature, theater and music.
“In Germany are very few names of artists of the Golden Age Our great challenge known., And I am sure we will succeed, it is to discover the many great artists who gave Spain in those years, “said Lopez-Fanjul Efe.
With the main cultural centers -Castilla, Valencia and Andalusia as axes, exhibition, presented today to the media, chronologically reflects the historical changes of Spain, whose artistic production was inextricably linked political and social events during the reigns of Philip III, Philip IV and Charles II.
Precisely at a time when the Spanish monarchy – “the first power” until the seventeenth century, recalled Lopez-Fanjul experienced a steady loss of power and faced the growing influence of Protestantism the Spanish art reached its peak.
“We wanted to show the richness of the different regions throughout the Golden Age and dialogue that existed between some artists and others, from one generation to another and within the same generation, “he said.
That it can “understand, for example, how Velázquez became Velázquez, and for that we need to know their origins, their contacts and their relationship with other painters,” he added.
The exhibition pays special attention to specific issues, such as portraits or still lifes, as well as the close relationship between painting and sculpture, with polychrome wood carvings master.
One room is devoted exclusively to drawing, with twenty works from the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett-of Alonso Cano, Murillo, Jusepe de Ribera and Francisco Pacheco, among others who have studied and exposed for the first time during the exhibition.
Among the best known works in the exhibition include “Mars” and “Don Diego de Acedo,” Velazquez and the impressive sculpture of “Dead Christ” by Gregorio Fernández.
Another outstanding loans is a step Easter also of Gregorio Fernández, five sculptures to life-size preserved in the National Museum of Sculpture of Valladolid and are taken to city streets in procession.
also has its place the work of the first Spanish sculptor Luisa Ignacia Roldán, known as La Roldana, daughter of the sculptor Pedro Roldán, also present in the sample.
The audience will also see the first work that is known Velazquez – “Three Musicians” – and, in the words of the curator, “three of the best Zurbaranes the world”: ” Saint Margaret of Antioch, “” St. Francis of Assisi in the view of Pope Nicholas V “, only signed portrait by the painter, and” Don Alonso Verdugo de Albornoz “.
The exhibition includes original books, as a copy of the second edition of Don Quixote in German, 1683, an “art of painting” by Francisco Pacheco, and the “Dialogues painting “by Vicente Carducho as well as a spiritual treatise of Teresa of Avila, all of the Berlin State Library.
“It was a very big challenge again rethink the art of our country with eyes that are 2,000 kilometers away”, not only earthly but also ideological, political and religious said Lopez-Fanjul.
The exhibition, open to the public from 1 July to 30 October and organized in cooperation with the Prado Museum, the National Museum of Sculpture of Valladolid and the Kunsthalle in Munich, account with the support of the Embassy of Spain and the Cervantes Institute and it shall then be in the Munich museum.
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