Turner. Light is Color
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Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC) Palau Nacional, Parc de Montjüic, 08038 Barcelona
Image courtesy of MNAC
For the English Romantic painter, water-colorist and print-maker Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) the elements of nature are abstract forces, with their own symbolism and meaning. This exhibition explores his fascination with meteorological and atmospheric phenomena, from the beginnings of his work, in the 1790s to the late 1840s.
Turner is recognized as the best landscape painter of the Romantic period for his mastery of light, color and atmosphere. He painted the immense forces of nature that already in that time of great change, at the beginning of the first industrial revolution, began to be threatened. Through around 100 works, paintings, drawings, sketches and prints, the exhibition traces the development of Turner’s compositions, from his first sketches to his watercolors, oils and final prints.
The exhibition reveals how watercolor was fundamental in the artist's scientific but intuitive approach, which allowed him to grasp the intensity of the forces of nature with an expressive precision never equaled. This exhibition confronts the viewer with a sensory experience of nature that affects us today as much as it did his contemporaries.
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