The Perception of Spanish Art in America: A History of Changes

Spanish Art Historian and Professor María Dolores Jiménez-Blanco presents “The Perception of Spanish Art in America: A History of Changes” at the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center.

For centuries, Spanish art was considered only marginal in the international context –a limited deviation from classical excellence. In the 19th century, however, its peculiarity turned positive: in the post-Romantic era, when freedom from the norm and the artist’s commitment to his time became paramount values, Velázquez, Goya and El Greco emerged as true heroes. That change in appreciation had special connotations during The Gilded Age in America, immersed as it was in the construction of a distinctive cultural identity.

In the 20th century, artists such as Picasso and Miró, who were central to the history of avant-garde art, became an unavoidable aesthetic and ethical reference for American artists, collectors and museum directors.

About María Dolores Jiménez-Blanco

Professor María Dolores Jiménez-Blanco, Resident Chair of the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center (KJCC) for the fall of 2017, is a distinguished Spanish art historian whose main field of interest is the relationship between art and politics in 20th-century Spain.

Since 1995, she has been a faculty member in the Department of Art History III (Contemporary) of the Complutense University of Madrid, and from 2002 to 2006 she taught at the Departament d’Humanitats of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra of Barcelona.

Her doctoral dissertation, Arte y Estado en la España del siglo XX (Art and State in 20th Century Spain), has become a reference for the study of Spanish State policies toward modern art, focusing on the dysfunctional relationship between modern art and official museums.

During her tenure as the Fall 2017 King Juan Carlos I of Spain Chair, Jiménez-Blanco will offer public lectures in English and a series of roundtables themed around her work. She will also teach a graduate seminar entitled Art and Power in the Age of Dictatorships.