El Greco, a mediator of modern painting

Abstract

Without clear articulation of their insights, except in painted copies of and citations from his works, various modern artists seem to have recognised that formally El Greco’s late paintings are mental constructs, representing only a schematic version of reality. El Greco changed the communicative function of painting from commenting on reality to constituting a reality. It is proposed that modern artists in a quest for a new approach to painting found El Greco’s unprecedented manner of figural expression, extreme degree of anti-naturalism and compositional abstraction a source of inspiration. For various painters that may have been a starting point in finding a new paradigm for art that was at a loose end after the influence of disciples of the French Academy terminated.

Sonder dat hulle hul insigte duidelik geartikuleer het, behalwe in geskilderde kopieë van en aanhalings uit sy werke, het verskeie moderne kunstenaars blykbaar tot die insig geraak dat El Greco se latere skilderye denkkonstrukte is wat ’n geskematiseerde weergawe van die werklikheid verteenwoordig. Daar word betoog dat moderne kunstenaars op soek na ’n nuwe benadering tot die skilderkuns in El Greco se buitengewone wyse van figuurvoorstelling, anti-naturalisme en komposisionele abstraksie ’n bron van inspirasie gevind het. Vir verskeie kunstenaars was dit waarskynlik ’n aanknopingspunt vir die verwesenliking van ‘n nuwe paradigma vir kuns wat koers verloor het nadat die invloed van die dissipels van die Franse Akademie geëindig het.