Art Madrid'26 – El Greco and the modern painting exhibition in El Prado Museum

La visión de san Juan, El Greco.

This year marks throughout Spain the fourth centenary of the death of the Greco, Cretan painter who came to Toledo in 1577 and settled there making the city the cradle in which he developed his most successful work and the time of maximum splendor. El Greco was a reference not only in his time but its influence persisted over time, as a mirror in which the main representatives avant garde of 20th century looked themselves. In the exhibition "El Greco and the Modern Painting" in the Prado Museum until 5 October, we can track the mark left by the painter in the work of Manet, Cezanne, Picasso, Delaunay, Modigliani and the Czech avant-garde.

Composición (La Oración en el huerto), Adriaan Korteweg. 

El Greco's work was rediscovered in the early twentieth century with the first exhibition in the Museo del Prado (1902) and the formation of new collections associated with his paintings of modern artists. In Central Europe, the Greco inspired the expressionism of  Beckmann, Kokoschka or Korteweg and the modern Parisians that played with surrealism.

Evocación. El entierro de Casagemas, Pablo Picasso. 

 

But if there is an outstanding painter clearly influenced by El Greco was Pablo Picasso, whose early drawings and paintings from 1898 show their penchant for the artist from Toledo. This became very intense in his blue period (1901-1904) in which he reelaborated the work Evocation in an original way.  

Mis amigos, Ignacio Zuloaga. 

The assessment of Greco in Spain was very noticeable from the 1890s and reached its peak in the figure of Ignacio Zuloaga who collected many of his works (The Vision of St. John, for example, present in the exhibition ) and then he painted Greco's details on his own pictures as a tribute.  

After II World War, painters turned to the expressive, emotional and gesture, and lyricism of the figures of the Greco inspired the painters of the time.

 
 
Vista emblemática de Toledo, André Masson. 

 


ABIERTO INFINITO. LO QUE EL CUERPO RECUERDA. CICLO DE PERFORMANCE X ART MADRID'26


Art Madrid, committed to creating a discursive platform for artists working within the field of performance and action art, presents Abierto Infinito: lo que el cuerpo recuerda, a proposal inspired by Erving Goffman’s ideas in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Amorrortu Editores, Buenos Aires, 1997).

The project unfolds within a theoretical framework that directly engages with these premises, conceiving social interaction as a stage of carefully modulated performances designed to influence others’ perceptions. Goffman argues that individuals deploy both verbal and involuntary expressions to guide the interpretation of their behavior, sustaining roles and façades that define the situation for those who observe.

The body — the first territory of all representation — precedes both word and learned gesture. Human experience, conscious and unconscious alike, is inscribed within it. Abierto Infinito: lo que el cuerpo recuerda departs from this premise: representation inhabits existence itself, and life, understood as a succession of representations, transforms the body into a space of constant negotiation over who we are. In this passage, boundaries blur; the individual opens toward the collective, and the ephemeral acquires symbolic dimension. By inhabiting this interstice, performance simultaneously reveals the fragility of identity and the strength that emerges from encounter with others.


PERFORMANCE: OSCURECER UN PAPEL. BY ROCÍO VALDIVIESO

March 5 | 7:00 PM. Galería de Cristal of the Palacio de Cibeles.


Nocturnality. Installation. Rocío Valdivieso..


Oscurecer un papel forms part of a series of actions in which the artist engages in reading through repetition, memorization, and a measured degree of improvisation. Within this framework, a non-linear mode of reading emerges from a written text that is transformed when spoken aloud, assuming a different form in the act of articulation. The texts stem from an ongoing investigation into materiality, space, the relationships between body and matter, writing, the sculptural, and a sustained interest in the exploration of voice and orality.

The material from which Oscurecer un papel is constructed consists of a collection of purchase receipts the artist has been accumulating over time. The printed text they contain, together with the action of bringing them into proximity with a heat source—thereby activating the thermal paper on which they are produced—generates meanings that revolve around the notions of consumption and wear.


Rocío Valdivieso. Latent Aura. Performance documentation.


ABOUT ROCÍO VALDIVIESO

Rocío Valdivieso is an artist, researcher, and cultural manager. She is currently a PhD candidate in Fine Arts at the Complutense University of Madrid. She holds an MA in Research in Artistic Practices from the University of Castilla–La Mancha (UCLM) and a BA in Fine Arts from the National University of Tucumán, Argentina. She was a Fundación Carolina fellow from 2022 to 2023. She currently co-directs Errática. Laboratory of Processes and Critique in Madrid, alongside Romina Casile.

She was part of the PEEPA 2023 Program at the Centro de Residencias Artísticas, Matadero Madrid. She completed the 2021/22 Artists Program at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires, and in 2020 participated in the Intensive Curatorial Program of Proyecto PAC at Galería Gachi Prieto, Buenos Aires. She received the Visual Arts Promotion Award at the 4th Visual Arts Week of the Ente Cultural de Tucumán. She was awarded an AUGM scholarship for an exchange residency at UNESP, São Paulo, Brazil. She also participated in the International Residency Program La Ira de Dios and in the Acéfala Galería Residency for Argentine artists.