At the MNAC, the exhibition ‘La luz es color’ features a hundred works, including 26 oil paintings, by the brilliant English landscape painter
A few years ago, the British were asked about their favorite painting. And they pointed to ‘The Last Voyage of the Temerario’, a work by William Turner (London 1775-1851) for which one can experience what happened to good old San Virila, who listened ecstatically to the song of a nightingale and when he came to itself, 300 years had passed. That is the alchemy that his works radiate. That magic of the use of color that Turner took to great heights can be seen until September 11 at the National Art Museum of Catalonia (MNAC), in Barcelona, which has just opened an exhibition to the public with a hundred works by Tate Britain in London. ‘El Temerario’ is not there (it’s like they brought ‘Las meninas’ to the English museum), but there is a wide representation of Turner’s paintings making ‘Light is colour’, as the MNAC has called the exhibition to a special exhibition. A tour full of the major themes that Turner dealt with in his canvases: ships, seas, rural landscapes, atmospheric phenomena and of course Venice, which inspired him so much, to which he devoted 150 watercolors, dozens of oil paintings and more than a thousand pencil drawings.
It is not the first time that Turner can be seen in Spain (he was in the Prado Museum in 2010 and in the CaixaFórum in Barcelona in 2005), but in the MNAC. Virtually absent from Spanish public and private collections, the exhibition therefore offers the opportunity to discover the work of one of the most important British painters, considered the master of light and romantic landscape. Visitors can enjoy works such as ‘Mouth of the River Humber’ (c. 1824), ‘Venice Festival’ (c. 1845), ‘The Ponte delle Torri, Spoleto’ (c. 1840) or ‘Lake Petworth, sunset’ (c. 1827) in which Turner uses light that can achieve magical effects in his paintings with an infinite variety of combinations.
The son of a barber like Cervantes, Turner became a behemoth, painting nature in all its possible forms, sometimes beautiful and serene, sometimes wild and ferocious. In that eagerness to try to understand her and capture her soul, as if it were a human being, they say that in his sixties he had let himself be tied to the mast of a ship as it entered a storm in the open sea “Snowstorm ‘ Paint. The result was another brutal work about the immense power of nature, furthermore revealing Turner’s unwavering dedication to art, to see, feel and live what it came to represent. Few artists like him have captured so much visual poetry on a canvas. One of them may be Claudio de Lorena, his teacher, and of whom there are several works, all beautiful, in the Prado.
Through hundreds of paintings, watercolors, drawings and engravings, the MNAC exhibition explores Turner’s fascination with nature and atmospheric phenomena, immerses us in the work of the great English landscape painter and discusses his main themes to accompany him on his travels through a Europe whose nature is beginning to change due to the industrial revolution. There’s no ‘Reckless’ or ‘Snowstorm’, but it’s exciting to be dazzled by the brightness of ‘Light is color’.
Source: La Verdad
I’m Wayne Wickman, a professional journalist and author for Today Times Live. My specialty is covering global news and current events, offering readers a unique perspective on the world’s most pressing issues. I’m passionate about storytelling and helping people stay informed on the goings-on of our planet.
