Travelling: Guest Post: A Guide to Spain’s Most Stunning Art

пятница, 22 марта 2013 г.

Guest Post: A Guide to Spain’s Most Stunning Art

Spain is renowned for being a bold, bright and vibrant country, so it’s little surprise that some of the finest artists in history hail from here. Salvador Dali, Pablo Picasso, Francisco Goya and Diego Velázquez, to name a few, are considered amongst Spain’s most creative sons, and you can see many of their finest works of art for yourself.

One of the best places for art lovers to visit in Spain is Malaga, which many people believe to be a mere beach resort, but is becoming something of a mecca for fine art fans with more than 20 museums and art galleries in the city itself. As it happens, Malaga was the birthplace of Picasso, and although he spent most of his life in Paris, he left a legacy here that you can discover while on your holiday in Spain.

The house in which he was born, on Plaza de la Merced in the very heart of Malaga, can be visited and it’s here that you can see some examples of his early work, as well as pieces by his father, Jose Ruiz Blasco. However it’s in the nearby Picasso Museum that you can get a real feel for his work, with over eight decades of his pieces on show, including sculptures, paintings and sketches that convey the sheer genius of his artistic mind.

Breathtaking Art in Barcelona

There is yet another Picasso Museum in Barcelona, with an even larger collection of his works, many of which Picasso personally donated. However there are artworks on an even grander scale to see in Barcelona, particularly by the Catalan architect Gaudi who was the mastermind behind the breath-taking Sagrada Familia cathedral, as well as the fantastical Park Güell, an extensive green space with colourful pavilions, pathways and even giant dragons that could be from the pages of a children’s book.

As the capital of Spain, it’s no wonder that Madrid has such a large number of art galleries too, and in the El Prado museum you can see an impressive collection of works from the Old Masters, a group to which Goya, El Greco, Raphael and Rembrandt belonged to. In total, El Prado has more than 8,600 paintings from artists from Spain and beyond, and you won’t get to see them all in one day, but you most certainly will be amazed.