Spain has contributed significantly to Western art, producing a number of well-known and renowned artists such as Velázquez, Goya, and Picasso. During the Baroque and Neoclassical periods, French and Italian influences were particularly strong, but Spanish art has always had distinct characteristics, which can be explained in part by Spain’s Moorish heritage (especially in Andalusia), as well as the political and cultural climate in Spain during the Counter-Reformation and the subsequent eclipse of Spanish power under the Bourbon dynasty. In Francoist Spain, art and culture are primarily a historiographical phrase, with little application beyond the historical positioning of artists and cultural events, as well as political affiliation.
Prehistoric Art of Spain:
Spain’s art spans various periods, including one of the most important centers of European Upper Paleolithic art and the rock art of the Spanish Levant in later periods. Large areas of Spain (https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/prehistoric-cave-paintings-spain-show-neanderthals-were-artists-2021-08-08/) were a center for Celtic art during the Iron Age, and Iberian sculpture has a particular style, influenced in part by coastal Greek communities. By 200 BC, the Romans had overrun Spain, and by the 5th century AD, the Germanic Visigoths had taken over, who quickly converted to Christianity. The few surviving works of Visigoth art and architecture demonstrate an appealing and distinct interpretation of wider European themes. With the conquest of Hispania by the Umayyad`s in the eighth century, there was a noticeable Moorish presence in Spanish art, particularly in Southern Iberia. The opulent courts of Al-Andalus created several works of outstanding quality throughout the next centuries, culminating in the Alhambra in Granada at the end of Muslim Spain.
Isabelline Gothic and Plateresque Styles:
Meanwhile, Pre-Romanesque and Romanesque art dominated in the portions of Spain that remained Christian or were re-conquered. The Isabelline (https://www.britannica.com/art/Isabelline) Gothic and Plateresque styles of late Gothic Spanish art prospered under the unified monarchy and the existing strong traditions in painting and sculpture began to profit from the influence of imported Italian artists. Following the influx of American riches, Spain lavished its wealth on the arts, with much of it focused toward religious art during the Counter-Reformation. During the Spanish Golden Age, Spanish control of the leading centre of North European art, Flanders, from 1483, and also of the Kingdom of Naples from 1548, both ending in 1714, had a significant impact on Spanish art, and the level of spending attracted artists from other areas, such as El Greco, Rubens, and (from a safe distance) Titian, as well as great native painters such as Diego Velázquez, José de Ribera, Francisco de Zurbarán.
Spanish Baroque Architecture:
Exuberant extravagance, such as in the Churrigueresque style, and a very harsh classicism, such as in the work of Juan de Herrera, are both hallmarks of Spanish Baroque architecture. Outside of Europe, the rising art and Spanish Colonial architecture of the Spanish Empire, such as in Latin America (New Spanish Baroque and Andean Baroque), was mainly defined by the former, although the Baroque Churches of the Philippines are simpler. With the exception of Francisco Goya, the decline of the Habsburg monarchy brought this period to an end, and Spanish art in the 18th and early 19th centuries was generally less fascinating. Until the Catalan movement of Modernism, which was initially more of a kind of Art Nouveau, the rest of 19th-century Spanish art followed European trends, often at a conservative pace. Picasso is the most well-known representative of Spanish Modernism in the English-speaking world, but Juan Gris, Salvador Dal, and Joan Miró are other important players.Because of the mix of Flemish and Italian influences, as well as regional variances, the Renaissance and following Mannerist styles in Spain are difficult to categories.
