Meadows Museum at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas


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News

For Immediate Release

November 28, 2005

CONTACT:
Victoria Winkelman
214-768-3785
vwinkelm@smu.edu

Prelude to Spanish Modernism: Fortuny to Picasso at SMU's Meadows Museum
First Show Ever in the United States Tracing the Development of 19th Century Spanish Painting

NOTE: Jpegs are available, along with a list of the 44 lending institutions.

DALLAS (SMU)—A "Blue Period" masterpiece by Pablo Picasso is among the many exceptional artworks visiting Texas for the first time for the landmark exhibition Prelude to Spanish Modernism: Fortuny to Picasso at SMU's Meadows Museum. The exhibition, which will run from Dec. 11, 2005 through Feb. 26, 2006, is the first to ever comprehensively trace the development of Spanish painting in the international arena from the 1860s to the onset of World War I. The exhibit features 80 paintings by 24 painters, including masterpieces by Mariano Fortuny, Raimundo de Madrazo, Joaquín Sorolla, Ignacio Zuloaga and Picasso. It showcases depictions of modern life, landscapes, and portraits, as well as five important pre-Cubist Picassos, including the 1904 Blue Period painting La Celestine (The Procuress). The works, some of which are being shown for the first time since the artists' deaths, have been assembled from many of the most prestigious museums and private collections in the United States and Europe, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, the Prado Museum and many others.

This exhibition, the largest ever presented on the subject, chronicles the extraordinary international success that a number of Spanish painters achieved during the later half of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The period was marked by profound change worldwide fueled by the industrial revolution, new technological and medical discoveries, faster and more effective methods of transportation and the growth of major cities. A significant number of painters decided to abandon Spain's traditional artistic vision and embrace the spirit of cosmopolitanism that was sweeping the Western hemisphere.

Though they continued to be influenced by their native traditions and values, artists such as Fortuny, Madrazo and Picasso left Spain to live, work and exhibit in the great urban centers of Europe and the Americas, and they generally became better known and appreciated abroad than in their home country. Sorolla and Zuloaga, who adopted some of the principles of Impressionism and Symbolism, had a significant global impact, and their work marked the culmination of the Spanish "modern" school on the international scene.

The exhibition also includes 11 paintings created by Ramón Casas and Santiago Rusiñol, pioneers in the creation of the famous Catalan modernist school, and artists from the following generation, such as Isidre Nonell, Joaquím Mir, and Hermenegildo Anglada-Camarasa. These painters, whose art will be for the first time comprehensively exhibited in the United States as part of this exhibition, were professors, colleagues, and friends of the young Picasso, and played a crucial role in leading his path to Paris.

"This exhibition is unprecedented, and documents for the first time the untold story of the development of the Spanish School abroad, from Fortuny's extraordinary international success in the 1860s up to Picasso's ascendance in the first decade of the 20th century," said Meadows Museum Acting Director and Exhibition Curator Mark A. Roglán. "Spanish painters working internationally enjoyed great success during this period and were an important part of the flourishing artistic movements of the late 19th century. In fact, it is impossible to truly understand the arrival of Picasso in Paris without reviewing the life and work of the cosmopolitan Spanish artists who came before him."

A bilingual publication accompanies the exhibition and includes essays, color illustrations, and catalogue entries written by Dr. Roglán and other eminent scholars from America and Spain. The exhibition and publication were organized by the Albuquerque Museum in association with the Meadows Museum, and were made possible in part by a grant from the Meadows Foundation. The Meadows Museum is the second and final venue for the exhibition.

In addition to several works from the Meadows Museum collection, four more paintings have been loaned to this exhibition exclusively for the Meadows Museum, including a masterpiece from the Prado, Fortuny's Children of the Artist in the Japanese Salon (1874), a painting that will be exhibited for the first time in America; Joaquín Sorolla's To the Water (1909), an important beach-scene painting that was featured in the 1909 solo exhibition of the artist at the Hispanic Society of America and is generously being lent by BANCAIXA in Valencia (Spain); and two additional Picassos, La Celestine (The Procuress) from the Musée National Picasso in Paris, and a magnificent Rose Period canvas, Nude Combing Her Hair (1906), graciously loaned by the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth.

As a complement to the exhibition, the Meadows Museum also will present Fortuny to Sorolla: Drawings, Pastels, Watercolors, and Prints from the Meadows Museum Collection, a smaller show of works on paper by many of the artists featured in the main exhibition. A selection of these works will be installed in the Lady Tennyson D'Eyncourt Works on Paper Gallery. Highlights include a suite of rarely-exhibited fine prints by Fortuny and drawings by Raimundo de Madrazo and José Jiménez Aranda.

In addition, the museum will host an international symposium titled "Fortuny to Picasso: The Spanish School in the Modernist Era" on Saturday, Jan. 28, 2006 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Speakers will include Dr. Roglán; Javier Barón, Chief Curator of Nineteenth-Century Painting and Sculpture at the Prado Museum; Alessandra Comini, University Distinguished Professor of Art History at SMU; Pilar de Miguel Egea, Professor of Art History at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid; Brigitte Leal, Curator of Historic Collections at the National Museum of Modern Art-Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris; Tomás Llorens, former Director of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid; and Edward J. Sullivan, Dean of Humanities and Professor of Fine Arts at New York University. Admission to the lectures, including a box lunch, is $25 per person. For reservations, please call 214.768.4993.

About the Meadows Museum
The Meadows Museum, a division of SMU's Meadows School of the Arts, houses one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of Spanish art outside of Spain, with works dating from the 10th to the 20th century. It includes masterpieces by some of the world's greatest painters: El Greco, Velázquez, Ribera, Murillo, Goya, Miró, and Picasso.

The museum is located at 5900 Bishop Blvd. on the campus of SMU, three blocks west of the DART light rail Mockingbird station. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday; 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday; and 12-5 p.m. Sunday. Admission is $8 per person, free on Thursday evenings after 5 p.m., and free for children under 12, museum members, and SMU faculty, staff and students. Ample free parking is available in the museum garage. For information, call 214.768.2516 or visit the museum's Web site at www.meadowsmuseumdallas.org.