De Greco

Wolfram's parents arrived yesterday and the plan today was to go to the coast and pay a visit to the sea. Except the weather was not in the mood for a little trip. It was raining cats and dogs, in other words the perfect weather for museum.
After a quick look at what's on we left to see the Frida Kahlo exhibition in Bozar. Seems today was not the day where things would go as planned as when we asked for tickets we were told the first ones available would be at 4pm. Hum, what to we do in the coming 4 hours then? Fair enough it's a small exhibition and they limit the number of people inside but what of our plans?
After a bit of debate we decided to have a look at the other exhibition at Bozar, this on on El Greco.
I had heard of El Greco obviously but could not really associate him with a painting. This is now solved.
What a better match than religious paintings on Easter week-end :)
El Greco was born in Crete sometime in the 1540s and was to become a painter of icons. Life being what it is, he went to Venetia and Italy where he learned the Italian techniques and later moved to Spain. Reason why I am mentioning that we moved quite a lot in his life is not because I plan to write his biography but because you can see clearly the influence of each technique he learned in his paintings.
It was quite interesting to see how he combined the different styles while trying to find his own. It was even more eye opening to me that the way he painted towards the end of his life was clearly avantgardist for 1600s.
Another surprise of the exhibition was to find out that he had a very good sense of business and had set up a workshop where apprentice would copy his creations, so he could sell a lot of them. That artist was not meant to die poor :)