Cuenca Secondary Level
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THE ROBERTO POLO COLLECTION. CENTRE FOR MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART OF CASTILE-LA MANCHA TOLEDO – CUENCA SECONDARY LEVEL: AGES 12–16 LEARNING GUIDE Hermann Max Pechstein, Portrait of Charlotte Kaprolat, c. 1909, oil on linen CONTENTS I. WHAT IS THIS NEW MUSEUM AND WHAT CAN WE SEE IN IT? II. WHY HAS IT BEEN CREATED IN TOLEDO AND CUENCA? III. A BUILDING STEEPED IN HISTORY IV. WHO IS ROBERTO POLO? WHY HAS HE GIVEN US HIS ART COLLECTION? V. COLLECTORS AND DONORS VI. A WALK THROUGH THE MUSEUM: 1. WHAT WERE THE 19TH-CENTURY BEGINNINGS OF MODERN ART? 2. WHO WERE THE AVANT-GARDES? 3. ART OF TODAY 4. PAINTING AND MUCH MORE I. WHAT IS THIS NEW MUSEUM AND WHAT CAN WE SEE IN IT? The Roberto Polo Collection. Centre for Modern and Contemporary Art of Castile-La Mancha, inaugurated on 27 March 2019, is a new museum created by the government of the Castile-La Mancha Autonomous Community to house the first 500 or so artworks to be assigned to us by the Cuban-American collector Roberto Polo. We can see works by 171 artists, many of them already ahead of their time, even back in the 19th century; this is followed by a selection from the artistic movements of the early 20th century; finally we discover a wide range of work produced by contemporary artists from Europe and the United States. Entrance hall: in the foreground, Woman, a sculpture by Annabelle Hyvrier; in the background, information panels and restored Islamic arches II. WHY HAS IT BEEN CREATED IN TOLEDO AND CUENCA? Toledo and Cuenca, the two cities of our Community chosen for this project, have both been declared UNESCO World Heritage Sites because of their historical importance. They are two ancient cities in which the impact of the new will generate interesting contrasts. Both centres will also mount temporary exhibitions, produce publications, and organise talks, workshops and other activities for adults and young people. III. A BUILDING STEEPED IN HISTORY The building that houses the permanent collection in Toledo is the former convent of Santa Fe, which has been declared a National Monument; it was constructed between the 9th and 18th centuries and forms part of the present-day Miradero complex which occupies one of the city’s most strategic positions and is associated with important figures from our historical past. Building began in the 9th century on a former Visigoth settlement; it later became an Islamic palace – travellers of the time recount the lavish feasts and celebrations that took place in its rooms and gardens; remnants from that period now form part of the new museum. After the reconquest of Toledo in the late 11th century, it became the residence of kings such as Alfonso X (called the Wise), and from the 13th century parts of it were occupied by various religious orders. Between 2000 and 2003 it was restored by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Culture, which has worked to ensure that this extraordinary building – which has so much to tell us about Toledo and its people – is preserved. Façade of the CORPO museum, showing the sculptural group Battle Figures by Miquel Navarro IV. WHO IS ROBERTO POLO? WHY HAS HE GIVEN US HIS ART COLLECTION? Roberto Polo was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1951. In 1961 he immigrated with his family, who were of Spanish and Italian extraction, to the United States where he studied fine art, philosophy and history of art in Washington, D.C., and New York. He became known as ‘The Eye’ because of his ability to focus not only on artists already recognised in the history of art but also on less familiar figures who are now being appreciated by art professionals. What distinguishes Polo is the way that he identifies art movements and acquires works of art that were ground-breaking at the time but were then forgotten. Polo is passionate about fine art, decorative art, music and literature, and ancient, modern and contemporary art. He is also a renowned patron of the arts, having gifted works to museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Louvre in Paris, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium and the Victor Horta Museum in Brussels. He has received many awards and honours including Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters of the French Republic (1988) and the Spanish arts patronage awards Premio Capital Arte al Mecenazgo Internacional (Madrid, 2016) and Premio Fuera de Serie, Personaje del Año, categoría Filantropía (Madrid, 2017). Portrait of Roberto Polo by Jan Vanriet, 2014, oil on canvas, located in the museum entrance V. COLLECTORS AND DONORS Sometimes, an art collector decides to bequeath, donate or assign artworks for the benefit of a public institution – or even to create one – and in so doing to give something to the whole community. In the United States – where, despite the prevailing capitalism, it has been traditional to give back to the community some of what has been received from it – this was how many magnificent museums – which, quite rightly, bear the name of their creator – came into being. It is a tradition that Roberto Polo is keen to continue, although, unlike most benefactors, he has decided not to wait until after his death but to demonstrate this generosity during his lifetime and has begun this process while he still has many years to continue enjoying this ‘family’ of his. VI. A WALK THROUGH THE MUSEUM The Collection contains a series of works by modern artists as significant as Kandinsky, El Lissitzky, Schmidt-Rottluff, Pechstein, Schlemmer, Schwitters, Moholy-Nagy and Max Ernst. It includes a wide selection of works by artists from Central, Eastern and Northern Europe, many of whom were barely represented in museums in Spain, not even in the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid. The Prado Museum boasts a rich collection of 15th- and 17th-century Flemish paintings and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum has some revolutionary 19th- and 20th-century artists, but the avant-gardes of this region of Europe were lacking; the Polo Collection has now filled this void with Paul Joostens, who created the first collages and Dada objects ahead of Kurt Schwitters, Jozef Peeters, Georges Vantongerloo, Marthe Donas, Marc Eemans, Pierre-Louis Flouquet, Jos Léonard, Karel Maes and Victor Servranckx, Belgium’s leading abstract artists. It also offers an excellent selection of works by contemporary artists from Europe and the United States. Visitors to the Polo Collection museums in Toledo and Cuenca will be surprised by the originality of the works on display, but it is Roberto Polo’s belief that museums should focus on artistic value rather than on the latest trends in the market. Jesus (2018), a 9-metre-long work by Nino Longobardi in resin and brass, occupies the central area of the church of the former convent that now houses the museum. In the background are works by Jan Vanriet (right) and Koen de Cock (left). 1. WHAT WERE THE 19TH-CENTURY BEGINNINGS OF MODERN ART? Certain French artists, such as Delacroix, Daumier and Degas, played a part, along with others like the British artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the Hungarian Rippl-Ronai. Alongside paintings of landscapes and figures we find many scenes of everyday life, because at this period all themes began to enjoy equal status. Honoré Daumier became famous for his satirical drawings and engravings, which caricatured the French politics and society of his time. Henri-Edmond Cross adopted pointillism, the style made famous by Seurat and Signac and one of the principal currents of Post-Impressionism; he would later cultivate a style that became instrumental in the formation of Fauvism. View of Gravelines (North), Seen from Grand-Fort-Philippe, pointillist oil painting by Henri- Edmond Cross, c. 1891 Moreau was the leading exponent of French Symbolism and was famous for the eroticism of his oil paintings and watercolours of mythological and religious scenes and for his enigmatic interpretations of figures from ancient history and myth. Rossetti, a painter and poet, was a founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, an artistic movement that idealised the Middle Ages and sought to return to the purity of pre-Renaissance art. Eugène Delacroix, Fisherwoman on the Beach, c. 1843–45, oil on canvas 2. WHO WERE THE AVANT-GARDES? Modern art was born out of the upheaval resulting from the major changes that occurred in the transition from the 19th to the 20th century and in the wake of the devastation caused by the First World War, which marked the start of a new era. In the early decades of the 20th century, innovative art currents began to develop that were known as the historical avant-gardes. Art Nouveau is a decorative style that spread across Europe and to the United States in the last decade of the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th and was employed mainly in architecture and the applied arts. In Belgium, a leading exponent, along with Victor Horta and Paul Hankar, was Henry van de Velde, whose work can be found in the Polo Collection; he was the first consciously abstract artist in the history of Western art and the founder of modern design theory. Georg Kolbe, Henry van de Velde, 1913, bronze, height 55 cm Fauvism – so named because the painters who created it were described as fauves (wild beasts) due to their vivid and aggressive use of colour – flourished in France in the early 20th century; artists in the Polo Collection such as the Belgian painters Victor Servranckx and Prosper de Troyers had a fauve phase before embracing abstraction.