Saturday 7 May 2016

Art news from Spain

Fra Angelico's Virgin of the Pomegranate:  from a private collection to The Prado museum, its due home, thanks to the present day duke of Alba (yes, it is a real person). (I was so surprised to hear this piece of news, I had been lucky to see this painting and after initial speechlessness followed by some ohs, ahhs, wows, OMGs... I could not stop repeating to myself "this should be in The Prado")



 The Hug, by Juan Genovés to the Congress building
                       (I would like to conduct a world survey: Does this painting inspire any feelings to you?
 If so, what kind? )







 Ceiling frescoes of Saint Nicholas Church in Valencia restored. Judge for yourself if they deserve the nomination as "Spain's Sixtine Chapel")





The exhibition showcases the work of over 120 African artists and creators and illustrates how design fuels economic and political changes. Making Africa speaks, from Africa, of a new continent “under construction” and places emphasis on its possibilities over its problems.

“Thinking about the future means thinking about our possibilities in the world. The future belongs to Africa, because it seems to have happened everywhere else already.” 
Okwui Enwezor, Consulting Curator of Making Africa


annnnndddd:



Bosch. The 5th Centenary Exhibition


El Prado Museum, 31.05.2016 - 11.09.2016





Contrast reveals essence



The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting. As the landscape changed from brown to green, the army awakened, and began to tremble with eagerness at the noise of rumours. It cast its eyes upon the roads, which were growing from long troughs of liquid mud to proper thoroughfares. A river, amber-tinted in the shadow of its banks, purled at the army's feet; and at night, when the stream had become of a sorrowful blackness, one could see across it the red, eyelike gleam of hostile camp-fires set in the low brows of distant hills.



opening lines of "The red badge of courage", by Stephen Crane