El Greco retrospective opens at Met

NEW YORK -- "El Greco," the first American retrospective on the famous painter in more than 20 years, opens at the Met Tuesday and runs through Jan. 11.\nPablo Picasso admired him, as did Henri Matisse. Jackson Pollock considered him one of his favorite artists. But it wasn't always that way. When Domenikos Theotokopoulos, better known to posterity as "El Greco," was creating his vibrant, brilliantly hued religious paintings in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, his work was seen as extravagant, far from the more realistic style then in vogue.\n"The art of the 17th century is ... the art of naturalism," said Keith Christiansen, one of the curators of a new retrospective on the artist opening next week at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. "El Greco's art is an anti-naturalist art. There was no bridge for the understanding of it."\nIt wasn't until generations later that El Greco (Spanish for "The Greek") was recognized for his originality and intensity. Since then, he has been considered a genius who found the spiritual essence of his subjects.\nBorn in Crete in 1541, El Greco worked as a religious icon painter before moving to Italy in 1567 and then to Spain in 1576. He died there in 1614, in his early 70s.\nOrganized by the Met and the National Gallery in London and composed of about 70 works from institutions around the world, the exhibition emphasizes works from the end of El Greco's career. That's when his colors became most vibrant, his figures most stylized.\n"In terms of religious painting, it is a search for the spiritual as opposed to the material," said David Davies, an El Greco scholar who is guest curator of the exhibit.\n"I want to show El Greco at his best ... His development shows how he continually explored new ideas to seek the essence of the subject," Davies said.\nTwo of the works, "The Virgin of the Immaculate Conception" and a version of "The Adoration of the Shepherds," have never been seen outside Spain.\n"The Adoration," a 10-foot-tall work El Greco painted for his own tomb, is a prime example of his style. A tiny infant Jesus lies on a white cloth, and the light radiating from him brightens the whole image. Around him are numerous worshippers, bodies stretched out and elongated.\nAside from the later works, another highlight of the exhibit is the placement of some canvases next to others that have the same subject but were done by El Greco in another year or even decade. By putting the paintings next to each other, viewers can see changes over time, Christiansen said.