So you think you know Spanish art? You’ve been to the Prado and the Hispanic Society, etc., etc. and you’re pretty familiar with it. Unless, of course, you are a real expert in the Spanish art, an exhibit at the San Antonio Museum of Art should suggest otherwise.
To celebrate San Antonio’s founding 300 years ago as a northern administrative outpost of New Spain, the San Antonio Museum of Art recently opened an exhibition called “Spain: 500 Years of Spanish Painting from the Museums of Madrid.” The goal: exposed the glory of Spanish painting to residents of a city whose art museums lack a collection of historical Spanish art.
Katie Luber, the museum’s director, and William Rudolph, its chief curator, went to Spain hoping to borrow art from the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella all the way to 20th century modernism. They wangled 34 paintings and they borrowed nine more from U.S.museums.
As I wrote in a review for The Wall Street Journal published last week:
What were they thinking? No list that small—from devotional works, portraits and still lifes to genre paintings and landscapes—could fulfill the ambition of that title. Yet with paintings by masters like Goya, El Greco and Picasso, this remarkable show gives San Antonians a strong flavor of Spain’s artistic traditions and manages, moreover, to showcase superb works by several painters who are little known anywhere in the U.S.
You can read more about my thoughts on the show on the WSJ website (search for my name) or on my website, to which I link on this page.
But for me, the best part of the show was not great works from the main museums; rather, it was lesser-known works from lesser-known museums—such as the Museum of Romanticism, which owns Luis de Madrazo y Kuntz’s wonderful ‘The Young Marchioness of Roncali’ and ‘Alfonsito Cabral with a Puro’ by his father, Manuel Cabral y Aguado Bejarado.
Both are pasted here.
I’ve also pasted a few more art works from the show below by, from top to bottom, Antonio Maria Esquivel, an unknown 15th Century Hispano-Flemish artist, Juan de Peralta, Juan de Nalda, Ramon Casas I Carbo and Picasso. Wonderful, aren’t they?
Thanks for sharing this! I need to get down there. I’ve been meaning to visit the McNay this summer, so I might as well see this show, too.