New York City Art Day

Sorolla

 Artists need a recharge of their creative batteries once in awhile. I am so thankful that I got a chance to have that today.

I went to New York City with 40 or 50  fellow artists and friends from the Delaware Valley Art League. The bus made three stops before heading back home.

First stop was an amazing little treasure of a museum called the Hispanic Society of America. There I saw the art of some spanish artists of which I am familiar: El Greco, Goya, Velasquez, Murillo and Zurbaran. But the real treat was my introduction to the artwork of Spain's "painter of light", Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida.

Statue of El Cid (outside the museum)

 I found the room which housed 14 huge murals by Sorolla to be the most impressive to me. From the center of this room one could view beautiful, colorful panoramic images depicting the different regions of Spain.
 (I apologize that the photo is a little fuzzy; no flash was allowed.)

In the photo below, the corner mural is the one which portrays life in the Basque area of Spain, Navarra, the province in which my mother was born and raised.

This artist's mastery of light was a true joy for my artist's muse to discover today!
If you go: The Hispanic Society of America is located on Broadway between 155th and 156th street in Manhattan.
Their website is:
hispanicsociety.org  
Phone: 212 926 2234.

Van Gogh Self-Portrait

Next stop was the Metropolitan Museum which is of course too huge to take in completely. There we grabbed lunch, then spent a couple hours taking in art. We saw some of the Robert Lehman collection, wandered through many rooms, checked out some works by Rembrandt, Titian, European Impressionists, including several works by Van Gogh (one of his self-portraits are pictured here). We also saw the Stein collection special exhibit which was mainly Picasso's works and Matisse.

This Van Gogh painting pictured here with cypress trees (I forget the title) was amazing to see up close. When one is that close to the actual painting, one can see the incredible amount of paint which was loaded onto that canvas. The paint layers on this painting were many! For a two-dimensional piece of art, it had a great sculptural feel to it.

At our third stop I saw some absolutely stunning works on paper at the Salmagundi Club where they were showing the American Watercolor Society Exhibition 2012. Click here to see one of the award-winning works on their website.

Simply breathtaking.

My artist's muse is happy tonight.