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Luis Meléndez : Master of the Spanish Still Life at MFA
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Luis Meléndez was the 18th century’s best Spanish still life painter, a master at turning the ordinary into the extraordinary. Coming soon to the Museum of Fine Arts is Luis Meléndez : Master of the Spanish Still Life, organized by the National Gallery of Art in Washington and supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities. The exhibition (running Tuesday, February 2, 2010 through Sunday, May 9, 2010) gathers together some of Meléndez’s best works into a comprehensive collection.
Meléndez painted still life in a time when the practice was at its height in Spain. However, unlike his contemporaries he infused new life into the seemingly dull task of painting fruit and pots. Taking his cues from the growing force of the Enlightenment and his king’s interest in natural history, Meléndez sought to display the everyday at its most realistic. In order to do this, the painter changed the viewpoint of the paintings altogether, moving in closer to the objects and setting the scene at a lower vantage point in order to display the items in greater detail.
Luis Meléndez : Master of the Spanish Still Life gathers several paintings from American collections and groups them together with related paintings from collections abroad. Remarkably realistic and texturally rich, these paintings allow viewers to step into another time and place.
The Museum of Fine Arts is open seven days a week. For more information on this and other exhibits, please visit www.mfa.org.