El Greco, his life and your Owners Direct holidays

This year your have chosen to visit the ancient city of Toledo when booking your accommodations through OWNERS DIRECT for the express purpose of discovering the life and times of one of the world’s greatest painters: El Greco. He spent most of his adult life in Toledo and the surrounding area although he was Greek by birth, which is evidenced in the way he signed his paintings in the Greek Byzantine way.

Although he went by the name El Greco which is “the Greek” in Castilian, his real name was Domenicos Theotokopoulos which underscored his Greek origin. Some of his work is regarded as being from the school of Expressionism and Cubism while some people believe he wasn’t a precursor of any conventional school. After spending time viewing his works he couldn’t be anything else but an extremely pious, cultured and very intense man who included in his spiritual works the tortuously elongated figures you see. He was able to achieve this form by observing interns at mental hospitals who he felt were closer to God. This is evident in the paintings on display in the Prado Museum in Madrid as well as religious institutions in Toledo.

Throughout El Greco’s life and work his Christian beliefs had a tremendous influence to the point he was guided by them; he would often refer to himself as an artist-philosopher. The images he first conceived in his mind were light incandescent pure colours with elongated figures that showed a Byzantine and Mannerist influences. All this resulted in an intensity revealing a vital visual representation of Spanish mysticism which was exemplified in his painting “the Annunciation” where you could see a holy path from human existence to a real heaven.

Even though he was famous for his religious paintings he was also a sculptor and architect of extremely high quality. He also did portraits; most well known are the paintings of his son and himself. For some reason in 1590 his output of paintings was to say the least prodigious; this work load was to last until his death. During this period he repeated different themes all of which seem to include the body in a much distorted form to the point of being extreme.

Before you leave your OWNERS DIRECT accommodations there are a couple of things that are important to this story you need to know. When El Greco died in Spain on April 7th 1614 it was discovered he owned an impressive library of books on architecture and art. The books were aimed at becoming a painter-philosopher which led some historians to believe his early training was in some way defective. Whatever you choose to believe, El Greco has become one of the most famous painters in the world. The masterpieces El Greco produced during his lifetime will live on not only in museums but in the minds of those people lucky enough to have had the opportunity to see them in person.