Spanish Impressionism

Welcome once again,

This time, my way lead me to Valencia, Spain. I went to visit a friend and of course as part of my mandatory city discovering program several museums were on my plan. My first stop was the Museum of Fine Arts of Valencia. Beautiful, beautiful building by the way!

Apart from the permanent collections, there was a wing solely dedicated to a Valencia-born artist. Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida (1863-1923) exelled at painting portraits, landscapes and works of social and historic themes. The exhibition showed a wonderful selection of some portraits he painted, but also some social themes. He painted in an impressionistic way, very expressive and bold, with vibrant colors. This one, painted in 1900 of Count Artal, made me stand infront of that portriat for a very long time, which rarely happens, since portrait is not my favorite medium of painting.

I love how the picture is divided into different sections by the various lines and diagonals throughout. I love the format, I love the vivid, yet rather undefined background, i love the placement of the portrayed. Beautiful picture.

But another picture I couldn't take my eyes off, was "People in frock coats playing in a garden" which Sorolla completed in 1900.

Isn't it just breathtaking?? I have rarely seen an impressionist painting with so much life in it. The colors are so rich and lush, not only in the depicted nature but also on the people and their costumes. Incredible how Sorolla captured the early autumn sunlight shining through the tall trees and falling on the playful scene. It seems like you can almost smell the freshness of the leaves, the crispness of the air this scene takes place in. What you can't see here, is the format. The picture is actually really huge so it seems, like you're standing right infront of that scene, participating almost in the joyful play. And look at that detail!! 

A true masterpiece!!

Not ever ForgITTEN again

Fans of color, hello!

Tonight I had the opportunity to visit the exhibition "Itten and Klee" in the Kunstmuseum in Bern, guided by one of the curators herself, Monika Schäfer. 

I have to admit, I hadn't done any research beforehand and I had never heard about "Itten" before so I didn't know what to expect. Is "Itten" a place? A theory or idea? Or is it maybe another person? Pretty soon, almost immediateley it was clear to me, that "Itten" was also an artist of the same era as Paul Klee (1879-1940). Johannes Itten (1888-1967) is also, like Klee, a swiss artist from the 20th century. Not having heard from him before shamed me a little since his works, as I learned, are quite extraordinary. 

The theme of the exhibition was color itself. The cosmos of color to be exact. Both artists spent an enormous amount of time studying colors. Several rooms of the exhibition were just dedicated to show their theoretical approach on color. They both were groundbreaking in our modern understanding of color, colorschemes, colorinteraction etc. And both artists worked their findings on color and their experiments into their works. In a very systematic, almost mathematical way.

The great thing about getting led through an exhibition by someone who created it, is that you get to hear alot of anecdotes. For example one about this piece "Encounter" from 1916 by Johannes Itten. It seems quite systematic, clear composition, colorful. Eventhough you can't see an actual object or something in perticular there is a rather sad backstory. A close personal friend of Itten had taken her life, shortly before this work originated. The greyish spiral that represents the tragic loss meets the more lively and colorful spiral in an intertwined "Encounter". This piece represents a great deal of pain on the artist's part. 

Since I haven't really encountered Itten before, I will focus on another series of works by him, which I thought was enchanting. "Spring", "Summer", "Autumn" and "Winter" are four works of a series from a private collector that were created in 1963. You can again see the focus on the demonstration of colors and how they work together. Itten, more than Klee, also tried to apply the study of colors to other fields of sciences or areas of different focuses. For example he tried to categorize different signs in colors, or feelings and even traits of character. This series although represents his application of color to the different seasons of the year which in my opinion he managed to achieve beautifully.