Join us as Collin County professor, Clair Robertson, shares some history about the Greek Painter, EL GRECO.
El Greco (formal name, Doménikos Theotokópoulos) was a Greek painter, architect, and sculptor. (Spanish Renaissance). In 1570 he moved to Rome, where he opened a workshop and executed a series of works. Regarded as a precursor of both Expressionism and Cubism, his most important architectural achievement was the church and Monastery of Santo Domingo el Antiguo.
El Greco's dramatic and expressionistic style was met with puzzlement by his contemporaries but found appreciation in the 20th century. In 1908, Spanish art historian Manuel Bartolomé Cossío published the first comprehensive catalogue of El Greco's works noting his impact on the artistic movements of the time:
He [El Greco] has discovered a realm of new possibilities. Not even he, himself, was able to exhaust them. All the generations that follow after him live in his realm. There is a greater difference between him and Titian, his master, than between him and Renoir or Cézanne. Nevertheless, Renoir and Cézanne are masters of impeccable originality because it is not possible to avail yourself of El Greco's language, if in using it, it is not invented again and again, by the user.