From El Greco to Goya to Picasso.

• Position: Museums Today

"... This exhibition provides a revolutionary new perspective on Spanish painting of the past five centuries.... Carefully chosen comparisons reveal previously unseen links between artists working in very different historical contexts, even as they bring the exquisite paintings of Spain's Golden Age onto the museum stage."

"SPANISH PAINTING from El Greco to Picasso: Time, Truth, and History" is a panoramic overview of five centuries of Spanish art. Approximately 140 paintings by Spanish masters, including El Greco, Diego Velazquez, Francisco de Zurbaran, Jose de Ribera, Bartolome Esteban Murillo, Francisco de Goya, Juan Gris, Joan Miro, Salvador Dali, and Pablo Picasso, have been culled from private and public collections throughout Spain, Europe, and the U.S.

Unlike other overviews that display paintings in a strictly chronological order, this exhibition is presented in 15 distinct sections, each based on a theme running through the past five centuries of Spanish culture. These thematic axes reveal the connections and affinities between the old masters and the modern era through a series of carefully chosen, content-based clusters. Accordingly, within each section, works from different periods appear side by side, offering often radical juxtapositions that cut across time to reveal the overwhelming coherence of the Spanish tradition. These sections not only articulate the dominant trends of the Spanish School, but reveal the Spanishness of great 20th-century artists who lived abroad--Picasso, Gris, Miro, and Dali.

The sections are titled: "Monks," "Bodegones," "Landscapes," "The Domestic World," "Women in Public," "Weeping Women," "Virgins and Mothers," "Nudes," "Childhood," "Monstruos," "Knights and Ghosts," "Ladies," "Crucifixions," "The Fallen," and "Flyers." Especially significant works include Zurbaran's magnificent "Saint Hugh in the Refectory" (c. 1655) in a rare appearance outside of Spain; Juan Sanchez Cotan's "Still Life with Cardoon and Parsnips" (c. 1604); Miro's "The Table (Still Life with Rabbit)" (c. 1920); Dali's "Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate, One Second before Awakening" (1944); El Greco's "The Vision of Saint John" (c. 1608); Murillo's "The Virgin of the Rosary" (c. 1650); Goya's "The Duchess of Alba" (1797); and Ribera's "Apollo and Marsyas" (1637), as well as nearly 35 works by Picasso, including his important "Portrait of Jaime Sabartes" (1939) and "The Infanta Margarita Maria from 'The...