Toledo or the city that inspired El Greco
Surrounded by such an inspiring world, it is natural that all kinds of artists base their most powerful imagery on personal observation and what surrounds them. Observing and soaking up what has been seen is always the first step in creating.
That's why, it is possible that a painting transports us to an exact time and place with just a glance . For example, it is possible to walk along the shores of the Mediterranean through the eyes of Joaquín Sorolla or arrive in ecstasy at the Alps of the romantic landscape painter Joseph William Turner.
Also Pablo Picasso, Vincent Van Gogh, or Paul Gauguin they found in the landscapes and cities that they discovered on their travels the ideal conditions of light, color and magic by which to let themselves be seduced. Therefore, do not forget to travel if, like them, you want the world to serve you as a muse , because as Rembrandt said: “painting is the granddaughter of nature”.
'The Starry Night' by Van Gogh
**TAHITI (GAUGUIN) **
In 1891, fed up with Western culture and fleeing to an idealized better and more natural world, Paul Gauguin ended up escaping from France to the distant lands of Tahiti. There, he found a new source of inspiration and became one of the few quickly recognizable artists , thanks to a sign of identity in his images and to owning his own style.
However, the island that receives Gauguin is no longer that romantic world that he had been told about in the writings of Pierre Loti, there is nothing left of that primitive paradise, since it was an island where the wild exoticism he yearned for had been replaced by a mediocre colonial reality that he didn't treat her too well.
Despite his attempt to integrate and get used to the customs of local life, he realized that he had traveled there to paint an imaginary Tahiti, basing his work on elements of island folklore, exploration of nature and an artist's dream.
'Women of Tahiti' by Paul Gauguin
In order to repeat the unmistakable scene from the History of Art behind El Grito, two elements are needed: a flaming sky decorated with unusual “nacre clouds” and place yourself on Ekeberg Hill, the hill in Oslo that caused Edvard Munch so much anguish in 1893.
The Norwegian capital can boast of having had this expressionist painter among its most illustrious inhabitants, who brought this painting to life in Nice, considered the most iconic of contemporary art. Munch found in one of the most beautiful viewpoints in Oslo the inspiration for one of the most famous works in the world.
Ekeberg is, today, a regular destination for locals and visitors, thanks to its views and because, certain autumn day anxiety fell upon the artist , just as Munch himself describes. He “he was walking down the road with two friends when the sun disappeared over the horizon. Suddenly, the sky turned crimson red. I stopped and leaned against the fence exhausted to death. Over the blue-black fjord and city, blood spread in tongues of fire. My friends walked ahead of me and I was submerged in a huge and disturbing anxiety. I felt then that it was a terrible infinite scream that roared through nature.
"The Scream" by Edvard Munch
**SAINT-RÉMY-DE-PROVENCE (VAN GOGH) **
In May 1889, Vincent Van Gogh moved voluntarily from the city of Arles to Saint-Rémy-de-Provence , with the aim of entering the hospital for the mentally ill of Saint Paul de Mausole, an old monastery from the 12th century, located on the outskirts of said French population.
The reason was none other than the concern he was beginning to feel about his state of health, after having cut off his ear, they say, due to a terrible argument with Paul Gauguin. The isolation that hospital life made him feel, separated from any artistic influence, caused him to all the knowledge and concerns that he had acquired throughout his life were settled.
It was in the solitude of the Saint Rémy asylum where the controversial painter, fascinated by the light of the area, He made around 150 paintings in just one year. And there, from the window of his room, he found the inspiration to create The starry Night , the painting that best represents all this amalgamation of elements that accompanied his obsessive personality.
Saint Paul de Mausole
**SANT JOAN HORTA (PICASSO)**
Pablo Picasso was in Horta de Sant Joan in two different stages of his life . The first, in 1898, after a period in which he was sick with scarlet fever in Madrid, and invited by his friend Manuel Pallarés. His stay lasted until February 1899, during which time his drawings and paintings still used a traditional language.
The second, ten years later together with his partner, Fernande Olivier, when the man from Malaga, already a renowned painter, he was in the midst of abandoning his pink and blue periods and on his journey towards pictorial cubism. In this second moment, the genius of the brush spent four months in the town. During this time he established a close relationship with the place, claiming that everything he knew, he had learned in Horta.
And it is not for less, because you The whole environment seems to have been created to be Picassoian territory . As a legacy of his time in this town of Tarragona, we have left The Horta factory, Houses on the hill or The swamp.
Horta de Sant Joan
** TOLEDO (EL GRECO) **
A Medieval and Renaissance Toledo It was what El Greco found when, on a spring day in 1577 and coming from Madrid, he contemplated its labyrinthine and gloomy streets for the first time. Since this chance meeting, there is nothing that reminds Toledo more than the paintings of the Greek artist.
Very little is known with certainty about the painter's previous life, just as very little is known about his life in Toledo. What we can understand is that, after having lived in places as romantic as Venice and Rome, the historical walls of the city, the secrecy and austerity of it attracted him intensely. The painter immortalized her on various canvases and the result of his long stay in Toledo are his best-known works.
View and plan of Toledo, by El Greco