Curator: Dr. Francesc Fontbona de Vallescar. Lenders: Museu Nacional dāArt de Catalunya, Museu de Montserrat, Biblioteca Museu VĆctor Balaguer, Museo Carmen Thyssen MĆ”laga, Museo Ignacio Zuloaga Castillo de Pedraza, Museu dāHistòria de Girona, Museo de Bellas Artes de Asturias, Museo de Santa Cruz, MUHBA Museu dāHistòria de Barcelona, Museu de la Garrotxa, Museu del Modernisme de Barcelona, Museu de la MĆŗsica de Barcelona ā LāAuditori, Museu dāArt Modern de Tarragona, Museo de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando.
Taking into account that people usually use sweeping generalizations when talking about Spanish Impressionism, this exhibition centers on the relationship between this pictorial style and Spanish art. The show consists of works by the following artists: Pere Vidal de Solares, MariĆ Fortuny, Adolfo Guiard, Ramon Casas, Santiago RusiƱol, DarĆo de Regoyos, Eliseu MeifrĆØn, Aureliano de Beruete, Ignacio Zuloaga, Hermen Anglada-Camarasa, JoaquĆn Sorolla, Ricard Canals, Isidre Nonell, Joaquim Mir, Marian Pidelaserra, Pere Ysern, Ignasi Mallol and Ricard Guinó.
The exhibition includes sixty one works, which belong to different museums and private collections.
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Ćdouard Manet, the main exponent of Impressionism, admired Goya and used Spanish motifs in some of his most significant works. However, Spanish painters of the second half of the 19th century did not immediately embrace this new artistic technique and curators were not very eager to exhibit new French Impressionist works in Spain.
MariĆ Fortuny, who died in 1874, the same year when the Impressionists showed their first exhibition at Nadarās studio in Paris, had painted in an easy and free style, almost alike to the nascent style of Impressionism.
DarĆo the Regoyos was the Spanish painter who best knew the innovative European groups and was a regular at the avant-garde circles in Brussels, where he met Meunier, Van Rysselberghe, Verhaeren, Ensor, and Rops. Pisarro, Rodin and many important Neo-Impressionists, such as Seurat, Signac, and Luce, were amongst his friends.
Ramon Casas, who arrived in Paris in 1881, was close to Impressionism. His work Bullring (1884, Museu de Montserrat) shows an early influence of the most colouristic Impressionism. Afterwards, Casasās most distinctive style, that of Plein air (1890, Museu Nacional dāArt de Catalunya), was quite more similar to Whistler and Degas. Casasās friend Santiago RusiƱol, who painted in a style similar to that of Degas, participated in the SeptiĆØme Exposition des Peintres Impressionnistes et Symbolistes (1894). In 1894 RusiƱol and Ignacio Zuloaga shared an atelier in Paris.
The influence of Impressionism did not really succeed in Spain at the time, except for the northern regions of Catalonia and the Basque Country, but some painters, such as cosmopolitan Aureliano de Beruete or JoaquĆn Sorolla ādisciple of the formerā, assimilated some traces of this new school later on.
In December 1897, Catalan painters Isidre Nonell and Ricard Canals took part in the Salon des Impressionnistes et Symbolistes. Nonell, who was the standard-bearer for the most innovative Catalan painting, was more inclined towards Expressionism than Impressionism, but Canals did connect with the Impressionist scene, taking into account that Durand-Ruel, the first art merchant of Impressionism, traded his works.