Until the age of 26, he lived in Crete, where he was an esteemed master of icons in the

post-Byzantine style in force on the island. After ten years he lived in Italy, where they
came into contact with Renaissance painters, first in Venice, recently assuming the
style of Titian and Tintoretto, and then in Rome, studying the mannerism of
Michelangelo. In 1577 he settled in Toledo (Spain), where he lived and determined the
rest of his life.

His pictorial formation was complex, obtaining in three very different cultural focuses:
his first Byzantine formation was the cause of important aspects of his style that
flourished in his maturity; the second was obtained in Venice from painters of the High
Renaissance, especially from Titian, learning oil painting and its range of colors - he is
always considered part of the Venetian school; Finally, his stay in Rome allows him to
know the work of Michelangelo and Mannerism, which becomes his vital style,
interpreted autonomously.

His work consists of large canvases for altarpieces of churches, numerous paintings of
devotion for religious institutions, in which he often participated in his workshop, and
a group of portraits of the highest level. In his first Spanish masterpieces the influence
of his Italian teachers is appreciated. However, it soon evolved into a personal style
characterized by its extraordinarily elongated Mannerist figures with its own lighting,
thin, ghostly, very expressive, in undefined environments and a range of colors looking
for contrasts. This style was identified with the spirit of the Counter Reformation and
went extreme in its last years.

He is currently considered one of the greatest artists of Western civilization. This high
consideration is recent and has been forming in the last hundred years, changing the
appreciation of his painting formed in the two and a half centuries that followed his
death, when he came to an eccentric and marginal painter in the history of art.
At that time in Spain, the main form of decoration of the churches were the
altarpieces, which consisted of paintings, polychrome sculptures and an architectural
structure of gilded wood. El Greco installed a workshop where they got to do all these
tasks, and participated in the architectural design of several altarpieces. There is
evidence of his studies on the architecture of the time, but his work as an architect is
reduced to his participation in some altarpieces that will charge him.84

Pacheco, in his visit to the workshop of 1611, cited the small models of plaster, mud
and wax
René Magritte
Little is known about the early years of Magritte. He was born in
Lessines, province of Hainaut, in 1898, the eldest of the sons of
Léopold Magritte, tailor and cloth merchant, and Regina (born
Bertinchamps). He began his drawing lessons in 1910. On March
12, 1912, his mother committed suicide by drowning in the Sambre
River. This was not her first attempt, since she had been trying to
take her life for years, forcing her husband Léopold to lock her in her
bedroom. One day she escaped and was lost for days. It was later
discovered, dead, downstream. According to legend, Magritte, who
was then 13 years old, was present when the body was recovered
from the water, but recent research has discredited such a story.
The image of her mother floating, with her dress covering her face,
may have influenced a series of paintings from 1927 to 1928,
including one of her best-known works, Les Amants, but Magritte
himself dismissed that interpretation of the painting. He completed
his first painting courses at Châtelet. In 1915 he began to do his first
works in the line of Impressionism. Between 1916 and 1918, he
studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels. He exhibits for the
first time at the Brussels Art Center in 1920, together with Pierre-
Louis Flouquet, with whom he shares a studio. After military service
he works temporarily as a designer in a paper mill. In 1923 he
participated with Lissitzky, László Moholy-Nagy, Lyonel Feininger
and Paul Joostens in an exhibition in the Royal Artistic Circle. His
work from the period 1920-1924, for his treatment of the themes of
modern life, his bright color and his research on the relations of the
three-dimensional form with the flat surface of the painting, show
influences of Cubism, Orphism, Futurism and of Purism In 1922 he
sees a reproduction of the song of love, painting by Giorgio de
Chirico, which impresses him deeply, and from 1926 he becomes
independent of the previous influences and bases his style on that of
this painter. In 1922 he married Georgette Berger, a friend of his
youth, who served as a model for some of his works. In works such
as The Tunic of Adventure (1926), he expresses his sense of the
mystery of the world through the irrational juxtaposition of objects in
a silent atmosphere. In The Threatened Assassin (1926), the
perspective space derives from De Chirico and the sets of the first
cinematic melodramas. In this same year he joins other Belgian
Joan Miró

Joan Miró i Ferrà (Barcelona, April 20, 1893-Palma de Mallorca, December 25,
1983) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, engraver and ceramist, considered one
of the top representatives of surrealism. In his works he reflected his interest in
the subconscious, in the "childish" and in the culture and traditions of Catalonia.
Although he is associated with abstract art for his mature style of stylized and
imaginary forms, in his youth he began in figuration, with strong Fauvista,
Cubist and Expressionist influences, moving to a flat painting with a certain
naive air, as his acquaintance is The Masia of 1920. From his stay in Paris, his
work becomes more fanciful and dreamlike, coinciding with the points of
surrealism and joining this movement.1 In numerous interviews and writings
dating from the 1930s , Miró expressed his desire to abandon conventional
painting methods, in his own words of "kill them, kill them or rape them", in
order to favor a form of expression that was contemporary, and not wanting to
bend to their demands and aesthetics even with their commitments to the
surrealists. 2

One of his great projects was the creation in 1975 of the Joan Miró Foundation,
located in Barcelona, a cultural and artistic center to spread the new trends of
contemporary art, which was established with a large collection of works
donated by the author. Other places with important funds from his works are:
the Pilar and Joan Miró Foundation, in Palma de Mallorca; the Reina Sofía
Museum and the Miró Space in Madrid; the Pompidou Center in Paris; and
MOMA, in New York.
His father was Miquel Miró i Adzeries, son of a blacksmith from Cornudela. He
moved to Barcelona where he set up a goldsmith and watchmaking workshop in
a passage near the Plaza Real in Barcelona. There, Miquel Miró met Dolors
Ferrà i Oromí, daughter of a Mallorcan cabinetmaker; they married and
established their residence in the same passage of Credit where their children
were born Dolors and the future artist Joan Miró.3

Miró married Pilar Juncosa in Palma de Mallorca on October 12, 1929, and they
settled in Paris, in an apartment with enough space for housing and workshop
of the artist; On July 17, 1931, the couple had their only daughter, Dolors.4
When he was released from the contract with his dealer Pierre Loeb, Miró
decided to return with the family to Barcelona, making intermittent stays in
Mallorca and Montroig. He was in the latter population when the Spanish Civil
War broke out in 1936.
Georges Braque
He was born in a family of artisans. He grew up in Le Havre and studied at the School of Fine
Arts (École des Beaux-Arts) from 1897 to 1899.

He arrived in Paris in 1900. There he studied first at the Humbert Academy, where he met
Marie Laurencin and Francis Picabia, then, from 1903, at the School of Fine Arts.

The Fauvista exhibition of 1905 impressed him so much that he attached himself to this style,
preferably using the colors pink and violet. He made a trip to Antwerp in 1906 with Othon
Friesz and, during the summer of 1907, to La Ciotat and L'Estaque. In the fall of that same year,
Paul Cézanne's retrospective exhibition and the friendship he had with Pablo Picasso, who had
just painted his Ladies in Avignon, made him change his style. The work of both, in close
relationship, will bring up and evolve Cubism. In the summer of 1908 he painted landscapes in
L'Estaque, in 1909, in Normandy and La Roche-Guyon.

Methodically studying the contour lines used by Cézanne, Braque progressively evolved his
compositions with slight interruptions in the lines. After 1908 he began to break with the
classical vision, using more and more geometric forms mainly for still lifes. He also introduced
texts in his paintings and created the collage. He also created paper sculptures in 1912, made a
work essentially based on still life at the end of the war, gradually abandoning his geometric
compositions.

In 1930 a house is bought in Varengeville-sur-Mer, near Dieppe. World War I inspired more
serious and austere works. As of 1947, his work is constantly interrupted by the disease.

In 1961, he became the first living painter whose work was exhibited in the Louvre Museum
when a retrospective of his work was organized there.

He died in Paris on August 31, 1963, at the age of 81 and there is currently a school in Nantes
with his name.
Johannes Vermeer

There is little information on the life of Johannes Vermeer, only some basic facts noted
in records and legal documents, as well as comments on him from other artists.
Because of this, Thoré called it the "Sphinx of Delft." 4

The date of birth is not known precisely, although it is known that he was baptized as a
Christian in the Protestant church Nieuwe Kerk of the city of Delft on October 31,
1632, under the name of Joannis. He was the second son, and only male, of Reynier
Jansz and Digna Baltens. His father came from Antwerp, and he moved to Amsterdam
in 1611, working as a silk weaver, a trade then typical of the middle class. In 1615 he
married Digna, born in Antwerp, moving with the name of Vos to Delft, where he
opened in 1641 a booth called the Mechelen in memory of a famous beffroi (bell
tower) of Mechelen (Mechelen in flamenco) that was in the vicinity of the "halle" or
market square of the city of Delft. There Joannes carried out as almost a child the
necessities of commerce; After the death of his father, in 1652, Joannes inherited the
premises with his father's business affairs. In addition, Reynier Jansz officially belonged
to the San Lucas de Delft guild as an art dealer. There Jansz met painters such as Pieter
van Steenwyck, Balthasar van der Ast and Pieter Groenewegen.

However, although Vermeer van Delft was of a Protestant family, he married a young
Catholic named Catharina Bolnes in April 1653. It was an unfortunate marriage: in
addition to religious differences (very rough in that time), the wife's family was richer
than Vermeer. It seems that he himself would have converted before marriage
because his progeny had names of the Catholic saint; In addition - among other things -
one of his paintings called The Allegory of Faith reflects faith in the Eucharist, but it is
not known whether it refers to the faith of Vermeer or that of his principal. Shortly
after the nuptials, the couple moved to the house of Catharina's mother, Maria Thins,
a widow in good economic condition who lived in the city's Catholic neighborhood.
Vermeer would have lived here with his whole family for the rest of his life. Maria had
a fundamental role in the work of this painter: not only was the first granddaughter
named by her name, she also used her income to gain her son-in-law's fame in the art
world. Johannes and his wife had fifteen children, four of whom died before baptism.
Camille Pissarro

Camille Pissarro was born on July 10, 1830 on the island of Saint Thomas in the West
Indies, then belonging to Denmark, where his parents had a flourishing ship parts
company in the port of Charlotte Amalie, so he had the nationality Danish, which he
kept all his life.2

Son of Abraham Gabriel Pissarro, a Sephardic Jew of Portuguese origin with French
nationality and born in Bordeaux, where there was an important community of
Portuguese Jews. His mother was Dominican Rachel Manzano-Pomié, a descendant of
Spaniards. In 1847, after completing part of his studies in France, he returned to Saint
Thomas to help in his parents' trade. In his spare time he dedicated himself to
drawing.3

He later left his home due to his parents' opposition to becoming an artist. He traveled
to Venezuela (1852), accompanied by his teacher, the Danish painter Fritz Melbye.4 In
Caracas and La Guaira he devoted himself fully to painting, creating landscapes and
scenes of customs.

In 1855 he moved near Paris, to the town of Passy.5 There he attended the School of
Fine Arts of marked academic cut and influenced by the style of painters such as
Eugène Delacroix, Charles-François Daubigny and especially Jean-Auguste- Dominique
Ingres, where he was marked by Jean-François Millet for his themes of rural life, for
Gustave Courbet and his renunciation of pathos and the picturesque, and for the
freedom and poetry of Jean-Baptiste Corot.6 He worked in the workshop of Anton
Melbye, older brother of Fritz. He painted landscapes of the commune of
Montmorency.

Between 1859 and 1861, he frequented various academies, including that of Father
Suisse, where he meets Claude Monet, Ludovic Piette, Armand Guillaumin and Paul
Cézanne.7 In 1863, Cézanne and Émile Zola visited their workshop in La Varenne and,
in 1865 , spent a period in La Roche-Guyon. He exhibited in the Halls of 1864 and 1865,
where he introduced himself as the "student of Melbye and Jean-Baptiste Corot" .8
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

He was born in Montauban, in Tarn-et-Garonne. His father Jean Marie Joseph Ingres, sculptor,
painter and decorator, was able to recognize in his son the pictorial talent he possessed and
quickly favored his artistic aspirations. With 11 years, he entered the academy of Toulouse
(1791) and trained with teachers such as the painter Roques and the sculptor Vigan. In 1796 he
went to Paris to study under the direction of Jacques Louis David, but his cold classicism did
not fit the ideal of beauty he had, founded on the difficult harmonies of lines and colors.

In 1801, he won the first Prize of Rome with Achilles receiving the ambassadors of
Agamemnon. He made numerous drawings and portraits: The Riviere family (1805); Granet,
The beautiful Celia; Enthroned Napoleon (1806). In 1806, Ingres left for Rome, where he
remained for 18 years, and discovered Rafael and the Italian Quattrocento that will definitely
mark his style. These years of work will be the most fruitful of his career. To them belong
voluptuous feminine nudes, among which La Bañista stands out; landscapes, drawings,
portraits, and historical or religious compositions treated in the manner of historical
mythologies: Joan of Arc, The Virgin of the Host, Jesus among the doctors, Christ giving St.
Peter the keys of the kingdom (1820) or Jupiter and Thetis He is at the zenith of his art, but in
France his paintings painted in Italy receive criticism, they don't like them, and Ingres decides
to stay in Rome.

The great odalisque (1814, 91 x 162 cm, Louvre Museum)

In 1813 he married Madeleine Chapelle, to whom he dedicated the work Il fidanzamento di

Raffaello, in which the Italian painter incorporates Rafael's lover, the famous Fornarina. The
fall of Napoleon and the economic and family difficulties mean for Ingres a rather miserable
period, during which he painted with reluctance all that was entrusted to him. In 1820, he
settled in Florence and, with the presentation in France of his canvas The vote of Louis XIII
(1824), made for the Montauban Cathedral, achieved a clamorous success in the halls of Paris.
He was appointed director of the Academy of France in Rome, a position he held from 1834 to
1840.

In 1841 he returned to Paris, where he obtained a triumphant welcome and was

commissioned to decorate the stained glass windows of the chapel of Notre Dame. In 1846 he
exhibited for the first time at the Gallery of Fine Arts, and then he was appointed member of
the commission, along with Delacroix. In 1849, he presented his resignation, motivated by the
death of his wife.
Sandro Botticelli
Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, nicknamed Sandro Botticelli (Florence, March
1, 14451 - Florence, May 17, 1510), was a painter of the Italian Quattrocento. It
belongs, in turn, to the third generation fourcentista, headed by Lorenzo de Médici the
Magnificent and Angelo Poliziano. They sought the freedom to conduct themselves
humanely, collected from classical antiquity.2 Giorgio Vasari narrates, in his Vita de
Botticelli, from his childhood until his death. This work belongs to Le vite de 'più
eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori. Less than a hundred years later, this stage,
under the patronage of Lorenzo de Médici, was considered by Giorgio Vasari as a
"golden age." This is due to the artistic splendor achieved in Florence in the late
fifteenth century.

The artist's posthumous reputation declined markedly in the following centuries, but
was recovered at the end of the 19th century; since then, his work has been
considered a maximum exponent of the linear grace of the first Renaissance painting.
The birth of Venus and Spring are currently two of the best known Florentine
masterpieces. They were exhibited for the first time in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence, in
1815.
and he says that he fell into poverty, and that he would have starved to death if it had
not been for the diligent help of his former bosses. The truth is that he continued to
produce works, although in a more dramatic tone and with a conscious stylistic
regression towards ancient models, as can be seen in the series on the Life of St.
Cenobio and the Mystical Nativity (1501), considered his latest works.

Botticelli created the Florentine type of woman. But there is no known concrete love
of Botticelli, or allusion to sentimental excesses; he had "horror of marriage." 5 He
never married. He does seem to have had a close relationship with Simonetta
Vespucci, who is portrayed in several of his works and seems to have served as
inspiration for many of the female figures in the artist's paintings.

Vasari says that he was an active piagnone (‘weeping’; that is what those who had
given themselves body and soul to the purifying movement of Girolamo Savonarola)
were called; However, despite what Vasari says, he was able to remain in Florence and
none of his assets were confiscated after the fall of the religious leader.

In 1502 he was anonymously denounced sodomy with one of his assistants, but the
charges were later dismissed. In 1502-1505 he appeared as a member of the
committee, with Lorenzo di Credi, who was going to decide the location of
Michelangelo's David.
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (Seville, baptized on January 1, 1618 - April 3, 1682) was a
Spanish Baroque painter. Formed in late naturalism, he evolved into formulas typical
of the full Baroque with a sensibility that sometimes anticipates Rococo in some of his
most peculiar and imitated iconographic creations such as the Immaculate Conception
or the Good Shepherd in a childlike figure. Central personality of the Sevillian school,
with a high number of disciples and followers who carried their influence well into the
18th century, was also the best known and most appreciated Spanish painter outside
Spain, the only one Sandrart included a brief and fabulous biography in his Academy
picturae eruditae of 1683 with the Self-portrait of the painter engraved by Richard
Collin.2 Conditioned by the clientele, the bulk of its production is made up of works of
a religious nature destined for Sevillian churches and convents, but unlike others Great
Spanish masters of his time, he also cultivated gender painting continuously and
independently throughout much of his career.
ou hardly have documentary news of Murillo's first years of life and his training as a
painter. It is clear that in 1633, when he was fifteen years old, he requested a license
to move to America with some relatives, which is why he made a will in favor of a
niece.7 According to the custom of the time, for those years or something before he
had to start His artistic training. It is quite possible that, as Antonio Palomino said, he
was trained in Juan del Castillo's workshop, married to one of Antonio Pérez's
daughters, uncle and baptism godfather of Murillo and an imagery painter himself.8
Discrete painter, characterized Due to the dryness of the drawing and the friendly
expressiveness of their faces, Castillo's influence is clearly visible in what are probably
the earliest of Murillo's preserved works, whose execution dates could correspond to
1638-1640: The Virgin delivering the rosary to Santo Domingo (Seville, archbishop's
palace and former collection of the Count of Toreno) and La Virgen with Fray Lauterio,
Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Thomas of Aquino (Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum), of
dry and cheerful colorful drawing.9 10
According to Palomino, when he left Juan del Castillo's workshop, he was qualified
enough to “keep painting as a fair (which then prevailed a lot), he made a batch of
paintings for loading Indias; and having hereby acquired a piece of flow, he went to
Madrid, where with the protection of Velázquez, his countryman (...), he repeatedly
saw the eminent Palace paintings ».11 Although it is not unlikely that, like others
Sevillian painters, painted in their beginnings pictures of devotion for the lucrative
American trade, 12 nothing indicates that he traveled to Madrid at this time nor is it
likely that he made the trip to Italy that Sandrart attributed to him and denied
Palomino, after investigating the matter, as he said, with "exact diligence." For the
rest, as Cordovan thought, the unfounded assumption of a trip to Italy was born of
“that foreigners do not want to grant in this art the laurel of Fame to any Spanish, if
they have not passed through the customs of Italy: without warning , that Italy has
been transferred to Spain in statues, eminent paintings, prints, and books; and that the
study of the natural (with this background) everywhere abounds »
Alberto Durero
Dürer was born on May 21, 1471 in Nuremberg, a city to which he was intimately
united. His father was a Hungarian goldsmith who emigrated to German lands and his
son's first teacher. Albrecht Dürer the Elder (1427-1502) was born in the Hungarian
town of Ajtós, located next to the city of Gyula. Originally called Albert Ajtósi, when he
arrived in Germany he translated his last name to "Türer" and then to "Dürer"
according to the local dialect. This surname means manufacturer of doors, and in fact
Dürer would hold a door as a reason for his coat of arms.

From his first training, the young Dürer inherited the legacy of German art of the
fifteenth century, in which the Flemish painting of late Gothic was very present.
German artists had no difficulty adapting their own Gothic tradition to that of Flemish
artists, such as Robert Campin, Jan van Eyck and, above all, Rogier van der Weyden.

The empirical concept of the world of the northern people (based more on observation
than on theory) was the common link. During the 16th century, the strengthening of
ties with Italy through trade and the dissemination of the ideas of Italian humanists in
northern Europe infused new artistic ideas into the world of German art, with a more
conservative tradition.

It was difficult for German artists to reconcile their medieval imagery - represented
with rich textures, bright colors and figures with great detail - with the emphasis that
Italian artists put on classical antiquity, mythological themes and idealized figures.
Durero's task was to provide his countrymen with a model with which they could
combine empirical interest in naturalistic details with the most theoretical aspects of
Italian art.

In his abundant correspondence - especially in the letters to humanist Willibald

Pirckheimer, his longtime friend - and in various publications, Dürer emphasized that
geometry and measurements were the key to the understanding of Italian Renaissance
art and, through He of classical art.

On the list of Dürer's friends was the Austrian Johann Stabius, an author who provided
him with the knowledge and details about the construction of solar watches. Among
the notes he left in his diary, it is worth mentioning a description of a nightmare he
had on a night of Pentecost in 1525, where he saw thromes of water falling from the
sky. Marguerite Yourcenar made an interesting analysis in her book El tiempo, great
sculptor.
. Marc Chagall
He was born in Vitebsk (Belarus) and was the eldest of nine brothers from a family of
Jews. His birth name was Moishe Segal (Мойше Сегал) or Movsha Jatskélevich
Shagálov (Мовшa Хацкелевич Шагалов). His mother's name was Felga-Ita. He was
one of the most important avant-garde artists and in his work there are resonances of
fantasies and dreams.

In 1907, Marc Chagall moved to St. Petersburg, where he joined the school of the
Society of Art Sponsors and place where he studied under the mentorship of Nikolai
Roerich. Between 1909 and 1911 he studied at the school of Elizaveta Zvántseva under
the mentorship of Léon Bakst. After becoming known as an artist he left St. Petersburg,
Russia, to join a group of artists who were in the Montparnasse district, in Paris,
France. In 1914 he returned to Vitebsk to marry his fiancee, Bella Rosenfeld whom he
had met in 1909. At the beginning of World War I, Chagall remained in his hometown.
In 1915 he married Bella and the following year they had a daughter whom they called
Ida.
Teachers of the Vitebsk School of Art. 1919. Seated El Lisitski and Marc Chagall, 1st and
3rd on the left, respectively
Chagall would become an active participant in the Russian Revolution of 1917, for
which he was appointed Art Commissioner for the Vitebsk region, where he founded
the Vitebsk School of Art (fr: École artistique de Vitebsk) in 1919. However, due to the
bureaucratic charge of the position of director in the School and to the disagreements
with Kazimir Malevich, professor of the School, he moved to Moscow in 1920 and then
to Paris in 1923.
With the German occupation of France during World War II and the deportation of
Jews to Nazi death camps, Marc Chagall had to leave Paris. With the help of American
journalist Varian Fry, he moved to Villa Air-Bel in Marseille before Fry helped him
escape from France, through Spain and Portugal. In 1941, the Chagalls settled in the
United States.
Some of his most important works are The Village and I (1911), The Green Violinist
(1923-1924, Guggenheim Museum, New York), The Birthday (1915), Soledad (1933, Tel
Aviv Museum). Chagall's paintings have been sold for more than 6 million dollars, and
also his lithographs have reached considerable value.
It is worth mentioning his stay on the Costa Brava, specifically in the town of Tosa de
Mar, where he spent a couple of summers, in 1933 and 1934. Currently the famous
work entitled The celestial violinist is preserved in the Municipal Museum of Tosa de
Mar.
In 1964, commissioned by Charles de Gaulle, Marc Chagall painted the ceiling of the
Paris Opera. In 1977, he was awarded the Order of Legion of Honor of France.
Francisco de Zurbarán
Francisco de Zurbarán was born on November 7, 1598 in Fuente de Cantos (Badajoz).
His parents were Luis de Zurbarán, a wealthy Basque merchant established in
Extremadura since 1582.1 and Isabel Márquez, who had married in the neighboring
town of Monesterio on January 10, 1588. Two other important painters of the Golden
Age would soon be born after: Velázquez (1599-1660) and Alonso Cano (1601-1667).
He probably started in pictorial art at the school of Juan de Roelas, in his hometown,
before entering, in 1614, in the workshop of the painter Pedro Díaz de Villanueva
(1564-1654), in Seville, where Alonso Cano met him in 1616. He probably also had a
relationship with Francisco Pacheco and his students, in addition to having some
influence from Sánchez Cotán as can be seen in the still life that Zurbarán painted
around 1633.
His apprenticeship ended in 1617, the year in which Zurbarán married María Páez. The
first painting that was cited as early in his career is an Immaculate believed from 1616
(Placido Arango collection), but its actual date is 16562 and, in fact, betrays influences
of Titian and Guido Reni, more typical of the last stage of the artist in Madrid.
In 1617 he settled in Llerena, Extremadura, where his three children were born: María,
Juan (Llerena 1620-Sevilla 1649), (who was a painter, like his father, and died during
the great plague epidemic in Seville in 1649), and Isabel Paula.
After the death of his wife, he remarried in 1625 with Beatriz de Morales, a widow and
with a good economic position, although ten years older than him, as his first wife. In
1622 he was already a recognized painter, so he was hired to paint an altarpiece for a
church in his hometown.
In 1626 and before a notary, he signed a new contract with the community of
preachers of the Dominican order of San Pablo el Real, in Seville; I had to paint twenty-
one paintings in eight months. It was then, in 1627, when he painted the Christ on the
cross (Art Institute of Chicago), a work that was so admired by his contemporaries that
the Municipal Council of Seville officially proposed to him, in 1629, to establish his
residence in this Hispanic city. In this painting, the relief impression is surprising; Christ
is nailed to a crude wooden cross. The luminous white canvas, which girdles his waist,
with a skillful draping - already in the Baroque style - contrasts dramatically with the
flexible and well-formed muscles of his body. His face leans over his right shoulder.
Suffering, unbearable, gives way to one last wish: the resurrection, the last thought
towards a promised life in which the body, tortured to exhaustion but already glorious,
demonstrates it visually.
As in the crucified Christ of Velázquez (painted around 1630, more rigid and
symmetrical), the feet are nailed separately. At that time, the works, sometimes
monumental, tried to recreate morbidly in the crucifixion; hence the number of nails.
For example, in the Revelations of Santa Brígida one speaks of four nails. On the other
hand, and after the Tridentine decrees, the spirit of the Counter-Reformation opposed
Paul Klee
Klee was born in Münchenbuchsee, near Bern, Switzerland, in a family of musicians, a
German father and a Swiss mother. His father was born in Tann and studied singing,
piano, organ and violin at the Stuttgart Conservatory, where he met his future wife, Ida
Frick. Hans Wilhelm Klee was active as a music teacher at the Bern State Seminary in
Hofwil, near Bern, until 1931. Paul Klee developed his musical skills as his parents
encouraged and inspired him until his death. In 1880, his family moved to Bern, where
finally, in 1897, after several changes of residence, he moved to his own home in the
Kirchenfeld district. From 1886 to 1890, Klee studied at the elementary school and
received, at the age of 7, violin lessons at the Municipal School of Music. He was so
talented for the violin that, at the age of 11, he received an invitation to play as an
extraordinary member of the Bern Music Association.

In his early years, and following the wishes of his parents, Klee focused on his musical
studies; but he decided to devote himself to visual arts during his adolescence, partly
because of rebellion and partly because of the belief that modern music lacked
meaning for him. He said: "The idea of going to music in a creative way was not
particularly appealing in view of the decline in music history." As a musician, he played
and felt emotionally linked to the traditional works of music of the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, but as an artist he longed for the freedom to explore radical
ideas and styles. At sixteen, Klee's landscape drawings already showed considerable
skill.

From his father he obtained German citizenship, which he would use all his life, given
that Switzerland refused to give him citizenship after his exile during the Nazi
persecution. He studied art in Munich with Heinrich Knirr and Franz von Stuck. At
seventeen he painted my room in ink (1896).

My Room (1896), Klee Foundation.

Klee worked with oil painting, with watercolor, ink and other materials, usually
combining them in one job. His paintings frequently allude to poetry, music and
dreams, and sometimes include words or musical notes.

Upon returning from a trip to Italy, he settled in Munich, where he met Vasili
Kandinski, Franz Marc and other avant-garde figures.
Georges Pierre Seurat
Georges Pierre Seurat was born in Paris. His father, Chrysostome-Antoine Seurat,
despite his humble job as a policeman, had saved and lived on his income. Georges
and his mother, Ernestine Faivre, were always very attached. During his school time he
was introduced to painting by his maternal uncle, the textile merchant Paul Haumonté-
Faivre. In 1875 Seurat enters the municipal night school of drawing, in the class of the
sculptor Justin Lequien. Here he meets Edmond Aman-Jean, with whom he maintained
a close friendship throughout his life. In 1876 he studied the grammar of drawing with
Charles Blanc. By 1878, Seurat and Aman-Jean entered the School of Fine Arts in Paris,
where he studied until 1879 where he rented a workshop on Paris Ballesta Street with
Aman-Jean and Ernest Laurent. 1880 rents a place where he painted his main works
until 1886.
A bath in Asnieres (1884).
In this same year (1880) he began his service at the military academy of Brast. His stay
in Brast allows him to discover the force of the sea that will be so important in his
painting, in his notebook he gathers numerous sketches of figures and studies of the
sea, the beach and boats. Once in Paris. For the next two years he devoted himself to
perfecting the art of black and white drawing and the physical properties of light. His
precarious economic situation forces him to have to resort to the sale of his paintings
but without having to adapt to the taste of his clients. During 1884 he began his first
great work, a huge canvas entitled A Bath in Asnieres that in 1886 was sold to the
Louvre.
After his painting was rejected by the Paris Salon, Seurat refused to present it in
establishments such as the Salon, allying himself with the independent artists of Paris.
In 1884 he met and established a friendship with his fellow artist Paul Signac. Seurat
shared his new ideas about pointillism with Signac, who later painted with the same
technique. In the summer of 1885 Seurat began the creation of his masterpiece
Sunday afternoon on the island of Grande Jatte, which took him two years to
complete. His painting is exhibited in 1886 in the eighth and last exhibition of the
Impressionists. With this picture the term pointillism is born, or technique of the
optical mixture of the colors. On August 26 of the same year the exhibition of the
independent ones is inaugurated, in her ten works of his are exhibited.
In 1887, at the initiative of Seurat, the group of neo-impressionists was founded in
which artists who used pointillism such as Albert Dubois-Pillet, Charles Angrand,
Maximilien Luce and others met. in March he shows some studies of his new painting
The Models in the rooms of the Independents. In summer he works in this painting and
in Circus Stop
Jackson Pollock
Pollock was born in Cody (Wyoming) in 1912.2 He was the youngest of five children.
His parents, Stella May McClure and LeRoy Pollock, were from Tingley, Iowa. His father
was born with the last name McCoy but took the last name of his adoptive parents.
The Pollock were neighbors of the McCoy family and adopted LeRoy after the death of
their parents. Stella and LeRoy were Presbyterians and of Irish and Scottish-Irish
descent respectively.3 LeRoy Pollock was initially a farmer and subsequently worked as
a surveyor for the government, moving with his family as the work required. Jackson
grew up in Arizona and Chico, California.

While living in Echo Park, Los Angeles, Pollock enrolled at the Los Angeles Manual Arts
High School, 4 however he was expelled from it; Pollock had already been expelled
from another high school in 1928. During the first years of his life, Pollock explored the
culture of the Native Peoples of the United States while accompanying his father on his
travels.

In 1930 (following in the footsteps of his older brother Charles Pollock) he moved to
New York where he studied with his brother and under the tutelage of painter Thomas
Hart Benton in the Art Students League of New York. The conversations about rural
America in Benton had little influence on Pollock, however his rhythmic use of painting
and fierce independence marked the artist.2 From 1938 to 1942, during the Great
Depression, Pollock worked for the Federal Art Project Works Progress
Administration.6

Trying to deal with his alcoholism problem, Pollock underwent Jungian psychotherapy
with Dr. Joseph L. Henderson between 1938 and 1941 and subsequently with Dr. Violet
Staub de Laszlo in 1941-1942. Henderson hooked him through his art, encouraging him
to draw pictures. Jungian concepts and archetypes were expressed in his paintings.7 8
Recently, some historians have indicated that it is possible that Pollock suffered from a
bipolar disorder.
Pollock signed a contract with Peggy Guggenheim in July 1943. He was commissioned
to create the work Mural (1943), which measures 2.43 x 6.04 m, 10 for the entrance of
the new Guggenheim house. At the suggestion of his friend and advisor Marcel
Duchamp, Pollock painted this work on a canvas instead of the wall so that the work
was portable. After seeing the mural, art critic Clement Greenberg wrote: "I took a
look and thought," this is extraordinary art "and I knew that Jackson was the greatest
painter this country has produced.
Eugène Delacroix
In 1815 following the recommendation of his uncle, the painter Henri-Francois
Riesener, Delacroix entered the workshop of the neoclassical painter Pierre Narcisse
Guérin, where Théodore Géricault and Baron Gros were his teachers. He frequently
visited the Louvre, studying and copying the great painters he admired: Rubens,
Velázquez, Rembrandt, Paolo Veronese, and there was a debate between tradition and
classicism and the desire to find, after appearances, reality. But at the same time he
studies Goya and is interested in lithography, publishing some engravings in Le Miroir.
Landscape painter Bonington taught him to paint nature. Raymond Soulier initiated
him in watercolor. In 1816 he enrolled in the School of Fine Arts, where he made
friendships that will last a lifetime. The first public commission he made in 1819, La
Virgen de la Mieses, from the Orcemont church, clearly derives from his studies of
Rafael. In 1817 he meets Théodore Géricault and poses as one of the shipwrecked of
his splendid work The Raft of the Medusa.

The artist frequents the literary halls where he meets Stendhal, Mérimée, Victor Hugo,
Alexandre Dumas, Baudelaire. Passionate music lover, he relates to Paganini, Frédéric
Chopin, Franz Liszt, Franz Schubert, among others; Delacroix prefers the friendship of
musicians, writers (George Sand) and poets to that of the painters of his time.

In 1822 Delacroix exhibits for the first time Dante and Virgil in the underworld, a work
full of strength, an ambitious composition and very worked colors; in it the light glides
over the swollen muscles, a fire consumes a city (in the background), the layers flutter
in the wind. Fantasy, macabre and eroticism intermingle. Two years later he paints the
slaughter of Chios, an energetic work and with a much more vivid color. Both paintings
concretize their inner ambivalence that is debated between romanticism and
classicism, between design and color, internal controversy that will accompany him
throughout his life.

The death of Sardanápalo, which Delacroix first exposed in the Hall of 1827-28, where
he received harsh criticism.
In 1825, Delacroix goes to England where he will spend three months studying English
painters, in a special way he meets John Constable, the greatest European landscape
painter of the time. Try to reveal the technique and the use of colors, analyzing the
psychic effects they cause.

and the predominance of the color on the line. Delacroix would call it the Asian feat.