His work can be seen until January 16 in the temporary exhibition ’40 years of friendship. Donations from the Fundación Amigos del Museo del Prado ‘
Perhaps no painter in history has dealt as much with the Prado Museum and with such intensity as Ramón Gaya did. Not only in his painting but in his writings. Alfonso Emilio Pérez Sánchez – director of the Prado between 1883 and 1991 – said: “Ramón Gaya is a great painter, one of the greatest, but he is also the most important writer on art that Spain has had in the entire 20th century.” .
Now, Ramón Gaya exhibits at the Prado Museum until January 16, 2022, in the group exhibition ‘Forty years of friendship. Donations from the Fundación Amigos del Museo del Prado ‘. An exhibition that brings together for the first time these 36 works donated by the Foundation from 1980 to today (the year of its birth and which already has 40,000 friends). Painters such as Fra Angelico, Murillo, Goya, Rosales, Sorolla or the one at hand, Ramón Gaya.
Gaya’s work ‘Agua para una infanta’, a screenprint from 1990, has the particularity of showing Las Meninas inverted next to a glass, since the painter, when he printed, never took into account the characteristic mirror effect of this technique that transforms the image. It is another of the many tributes he made, a theme that he returned to time and time again: “I don’t repeat, I insist,” he said.
The history of Ramón Gaya and his intimate relationship with the Prado Museum is long, since he entered for the first time at the age of seventeen; copy some works for the traveling museum of the Pedagogical Missions; defined it in his exile in Mexico as a kind of homeland or Spanish rock; his emotional reunion on his return from exile with El Prado and finally, in his aftermath, when he received the Velázquez Prize at the age of 92.
The award was granted for the first time in history and in the best possible setting, the Prado Museum. For many, it could not start on a better footing. It was more than justified.
Sometimes the Prado Museum exhibits contemporary artists (since its collection includes up to 1881). We have seen samples of Picasso, Giacometti, Hamilton … Perhaps no one deserves more to exhibit at the Prado than Ramón Gaya, to merge among its great masters. No other would be more justified, since no one has worked so hard on ‘The Spanish Rock’ and its painters, but – above all – on that indecipherable miracle that Velázquez supposes.
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