Exhibition - Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza December 2012

I was very fortunate to visit this great museum in Madrid.  They have a permanent exhibition which showcases many famous artist from the 13th to the 20th century.  I must admit I was heading towards the Prado Museum but when I saw the massive congo line of people waiting to get in I changed my mind and went to see this instead.  A great choice as I have been several times to the Prado and this was my first visit to the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza.

An exhibition over over a 1000 different works of art including this beautiful watercolour by Paul Cezanne.

Bottle, Carafe, Jug and Lemons was painted during 1902-6. Watercolour on Paper, 44.5cm x 60cm.

Cezanne has skillfully used the background of the painting to support the main subjects sitting on the tray.  The bottle to the left in the background grabs your attention after you see the main subjects and draws you into the background. The three colours, red, yellow and blue have been simply used on a good drawing to create what I think is a very successful piece of art.  Cezanne has also all most, but not quite outlined the main subjects creating a contrast between the softness of the watercolour and the definite dark lines around the bottle and carafe.   I really enjoyed this painting because when you see it in real life the bottom part of the painting is untouched almost like he could have continued if had chosen too.


The second painting by Paul Cezanne is titled ''Portrait of a Peasant'' 1905-6. Oil on Canvas 64.8cm x 54.6cm.

The trees, low wall and chair all support the main character of the man seated cross-legged with his jacket over his left arm, topped off by his hat.  Even though Cezanne as not included the features of the face you can imagine what they would be like. His skillful drawing has been the skeleton of this painting where he has used a very limited pallet of three colours, similar to the previous watercolour painting above to create a very harmonious work of art.

This is one of my favorite paintings.  The copy of this does not do justice to the original.  The original colour of the green... in this painting ''The Swaying Dancer'' (Dancer in Green) is actually an aqua sea-blue colour.  This is a combination of beautifully drawn dancers, cropped in a way that you can imagine the rest of the dancers.  The pastel is incredibly vibrant and its is hard to believe that it was produced in the 1800's.

This beautiful painting by Canaletto in the early 1700's  ' La Piazza San Marco in Venice, is a masterpiece of drawing.  Canaletto was the son of a famous italian painter Bernardo Canal, so his name became ''little canal''.  Much of his work was done on location as opposed to many artists of that time who worked in studios. From his incredibly accurate drawings he was able to produce many incredible works of art of scenes around Venice that you can still see today such as this one.

And finally this painting by Salvador Dali  ''Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Waking Up'', 1944.

Although I am not a fan of this type of painting I am impressed by the precise drawing which links all sections of the work together and you are drawn into the painting to look at all the different subjects he has included.

My visit to the Museum was very interesting and I enjoyed analyzing the beautiful art that I was able to see.