Museo des Belle Artes, Seville.

Another gallery visited on a recent trip to Seville was the Museo des Belles Artes.  Seville is full of wonderful buildings featuring Mudejar architecture, a fusion of Moorish and Christian, and this is no exception.  Housed in the magnificent Convento de la Merced Calsada, the building is worth a visit in its own right:

The permanent collection works chronologically from the medieval period to this century.  As well as displaying superb paintings and sculptures by El Greco, Pacheco, Velaquez, Cano, Zurbaran, Leal and Murillo, it provides insights into old Seville.

As well as the permanent collection, however, there was an exhibition of cubist art.  Cubism is one of the central movements in 20th Century avent-garde art.  It was founded by Braque and Picasso in Paris in the first decade of the last century.  It gave rise to a revolutionary form of painting based on a process of deconstructing reality, ignoring conventional perspective, getting rid of detail and the use of geometric forms.  This exhibition highlights the diversity in the designs and techniques  used in cubism over the years.The exhibition is in three parts, beginning with Juan Gris who represents the essence of the collection.  It moves on to other contemporary artists who were active in Paris and concludes with the international expansion of the movement.

Juan Gris began by framenting the image without reaching absolute abstraction in order to suggest how it should be recomposed.  From the 1920s his work became more lyrical and he used less vivid colours, although I felt that his earlier work had more muted colours.  Other painters joined the movement after 1910: Lhote, Gleizes and Metzinger.  Many cubist artists fought in the First World War and so much of the creative phase came to an end  In the 1920s the work of Albert Gleizes became more abstract and his colours were brighter.

Image 1

Image 2

Images

1. Gris, J. (1915) Still Life with Violin and Glass. [oil on canvas] [online image] Available from: http://www.artyfactory.com/art_appreciation/still_life/juan_gris.htm [Accessed 19.04.2014]
2. Gleizes, A. (1924) The Schoolboy. [Painting] [online image] Available from: http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/albert-gleizes/the-schoolboy-1924 [Accessed 19.04.2014]