Album 107 English issue

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107

The Hermitage ◆ John Constable ◆ Flanders - Brussels Korean painters ◆ Araki ◆ Howard Gardner ◆ Juan Gatti

EXPOSICIONES

11 FEBRERO / 29 ABRIL 2012 SALA RECOLETOS Paseo de Recoletos, 23, Madrid. Telf. 91 58 16 100

Ojos cerrados, 1890 Musée d’Orsay. © RMN (Musée d’Orsay) / Hervé Lewandowski

11 FEBRERO / 29 ABRIL 2012 SALA RECOLETOS Paseo de Recoletos, 23, Madrid. Telf. 91 58 16 100

Icaro sobre el Empire State Building, 1931 (detalle) © Colección George Eastman House, Rochester

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Content W I N T E R

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ART 14

Exhibitions Juan Gatti Berthe Morisot

Director Jesús Tablate Miquis Editorial director Joaquín Lledó Editorial staff: Ana Rimblas Carlos Olalla Ernesto Parra Joaquín Arnáiz P.N.C. Sobregrau Carlos Villarrubia Federico Echevarría Deputy Advertising Director: Beatriz García-Jimenez Design: Julio Molina © Images by VEGAP Prepress Preim Degradé Printing Artes Gráficas Palermo S.L. Distribution SGEL Legal Deposit: M-42261-1985 ISSN: 1131-6411 Publisher Album Letras Artes, S.L. C/ Juan Álvarez Mendizabal, 58 Tel. 91 547 97 42 Tel. 91 559 90 27 E-mail: album@albumletrasartes.com

Web: www.album-letras-arte.com

All the yearly issues of this magazine have been subsidized by the Department of Books, Archives and Libraries for its dissemination in libraries, cultural centers and universities in Spain.

20 28 32 38 48 50 58 68 72

Korean painters Carlos Saez de Tejada Ramiro Fernández Saus The Hermitage Flanders - Brussels Terra Brasilis John Constable Imperial Treasures Araki

Magazine 83 86 89

Howard Gardner

92

Book gallery

Writers’ Libraries Gertrud Bell I

Cover: Gustave Van de Woestyne

MÁS DE 200 FIRMAS DE HOMBRE SIN IR DE CALLE EN CALLE

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THE KINGS’ CLOCKS In the Spanish Court of the 18th century Palacio Real de Madrid

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hilip V, the first monarch of the House of Bourbon and successor to Charles II, inherited all the clocks saved from the fires that devastated the royal residences and which were amassed by the monarchs of the House of Austria. Right from his arrival to Spain, he expressed a strong interest for clocks and, specially, for English clocks. He acquired them for his personal use, to decorate his palaces and royal residences and to present them as gift to princes, foreign ambassadors as well as his staff. Right from a young age, his son Ferdinand VI, showed special preference for automatic clocks, starting a custom that will continue thereafter. He acquired several models in this style among which, El Pastor, one of the most important and odd pieces of the royal collection.

Regarding clockmaking, the reign of Charles III stands out more for the interest of the monarch in promoting schools and factories devoted to this art, than for acquiring watches to enlarge the royal collection. Charles III resumed his father’s project and attempted to establish a watch manufacture. He promoted and supported the Charost brothers to open a school-manufacture in Madrid to perfect the technique learned by

Spanish clockmakers and offered them the opportunity to produce machines that could compete with the French industry and reduce the costs in a more and more precarious economic situation.

The existing documentation shows evidence that all through the century, several Spanish monarchs attempted to promote Spanish clockmakers, but this proved to be hard work due to foreign competition.

Although all through the century, the monarchs relied on several business agents, the most important and well known of which was François-Louis Godon (after he Hispanicize his name) who provided Charles III and Maria Luisa with a good number of clocks, porcelain, furniture, jewelry and other articles. The French man reached the position of honorary clockmaker to the Court of Spain but did not practice as such and rather became the purveyor of the monarchs for all those articles that could be used to enhance the decoration of their palaces and royal residences.

For fifteen years, he compiled the best models of European clocks, produced mostly by French artists.

Patrimonio Nacional From October 25, 2011 to January 15, 2012 4

People, 1904

ANSELMO GUINEA 1855-1906 The Origins of Modern in Basque painting Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao. Fundación BBK

T

he Bilbao Fine Arts Museum presents the first individual exhibition devoted to Bilbao artist Anselmo Guinea which comprises 80-plus works, more than half of which have never before been seen in public. Many others have not been on public display for more than a century. So this is a unique opportunity to discover the delicate virtuosity and the splendid handling of light of this painter, whose work is essential to our understanding of the aesthetic changes wrought in turn-of-the-century Basque painting.

Works selected cover all the genres Guinea worked in, including his popular and traditional scenes, landscapes and portraits in his preferred media (mostly oil paintings, although some of his watercolors and exquisite drawings will also be on display).

The exhibition begins with the realist landscapes painted in Bilbao in the 1870s.

Guinea’s Italian venture between 1881 and 1887 broadened the spectrum of his interests towards Orientalist painting, dress coats and history, popular and traditional scenes. During this phase he consolidated his technique and fully mastered the rendering of light.

In the late 19th century, he went to Paris to see Impressionism, Pointillism and Modernism at first hand. His time in Paris cued a change in his painting, which became more luminous and fluid from that time on. With the achievements of Adolfo Guiard, Darío de Regoyos and Manuel Losada, Guinea made a decisive contribution to the renewal of Basque traditional theme painting and landscape art. And, although industrialization had begun to alter the local landscape, Guinea would cling to his rural vision, finding the kind of characters and motifs he needed in the idyllic Arratia valley. As the new century began, his friendship with several local collectors, particularly with ship owner Ramón de la Sota, enabled him to broaden his thematic range to include marine views and to explore the Modernist artistic potential of stained glass.

The exhibition closes with works produced during his visits to Rome between 1902 and 1905. There, he concentrated on social realism and, once again, on Italian popular and traditional scenes, largely to satisfy the demand of local collectors interested in his artistic career, cut short by his untimely death.

From February 13 to May 20, 2012 6

Naturaleza muerta en el mercado, 2011 Paco Broca

XXVI EDITION OF THE BMW PAINTING AWARD José Crecente

O

nce again, the BMW Painting Award has attracted new artists who, on this occasion, have sent more than eight hundred pieces in a variety of trends, technical approaches and styles, thus fulfilling one of the objectives of this Prize, that of boosting and promoting artistic vocations.

The First Prize of this edition of this important competition, awarded with 24,000€, was given to the twenty-four-year old painter from Valencia, Cristina Gamón Lázaro for her work Infinity II, an acrylic on methacrylate. The BMW Youngest Talent –awarded with 4,000€– went to Inés Rodríguez Porrero, a four-year-old for her painting titled La casa gigante, an urban image that gives us a view of the inside. On the other hand, the grant Antolin Mario that

Infinity II, 2011 Cristina Gamón Lázaro 8

Declaración canina, 2011 Antonio Barroso

helps in the pictorial investigations, awarded with 8,000€, went to the painting titled Forst, From a tree-house, a romantic and mysterious landscape painted by 25-year-old Diego Valejo Pierna. Besides, this painting has won one of the Medals of Honor of this Award. The other nine Medals of Honor –ten medals are traditionally awarded– went to the following artists: Raquel Bartolomé Robledo for Elogio a la maleza; Ferrán Gisbert Carbonell for Templo; Eduardo Lozano Chavarría for Playa; Javier Palacios Rodríguez for Red Scratch, Juan Manuel Pérez for ¿Hasta cuándo?; Francisco Rodríguez García for Mar de plásticos; Ramón Surinyac Pous for Cobalt blue light V; and Keke Vilabelda for I-80 Spring Valley (The long Voyage Series). These works add to those of the selected artists. And, as usual, the award winning works as well as the more than forty selected ones have been exhibited in January at the Casa de Vacas Cultural Centrer in the Retiro Park in Madrid.

Cobalt blue light V, 2011 Ramón Surinyac Pous 9