Born:
1 October 1541; Heraklion, Crete, Greece
Died:
7 April 1614; Toledo, Spain
Nationality:
Spanish, Greek
Art Movement:
Mannerism (Late Renaissance)
Field:
painting, sculpture, architecture
Influenced by:
Tintoretto, Titian
Influenced on:
Eugene Delacroix, Edouard Manet, Paul Cezanne, Pablo Picasso, Franz Marc
Teachers:
Titian
Doménikos Theotokópoulos, best known as El Greco, was a Greek painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance, who was born on October 1, 1541 and died on April 7, 1614.
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| Byzantine chapel at Fodele, Crete, Greece, where El Greco was born |
His nickname "El Greco" denotes his Greek origin, and he normally signed his paintings with his birth name in Greek letters, “Δομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος”, and often added “Κρής Krēs”, meaning Cretan, to his signature.
El Greco was born in the Kingdom of Candia (now Crete), which was then part of the Republic of Venice and the center of Post-Byzantine art.
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| Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Byzantine icon of 13th or 14th century |
He moved to Rome in 1570, where he opened a workshop and created a series of works. During his stay in Italy, El Greco enriched his style with elements of Mannerism and of the Venetian Renaissance, influenced by a number of great artists of the time, especially Tintoretto.
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| Tintoretto |
In 1577, he moved to Toledo, Spain, where he lived and
worked for the rest of his life and he commissioned and completed several
important works that became his most famous paintings.
El Greco's dramatic and expressionistic style of paintings was embarrassing to his contemporaries, but in the 20th century they were appreciated.
While he is regarded as a pioneer of Expressionism and Cubism, his personality and works have been a source of inspiration for poets and writers such as Rainer Maria Rilke and Nikos Kazantzakis.
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| Rainer Maria Rilke |
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| Nikos Kazantzakis |
He is most famous for his unusually elongated
figures and fantastic pigmentation based on Byzantine traditions with those of
Western painting.
Famous Works (El Greco)
Thank
you.
