Focus on The Immaculate Conception (El Greco, Toledo) and explore the Technique and influence.
In accordance to his training in Venice, as well as his preference that opposed Northern Italy's focus on design over color, El Greco held the belief that the color used in a composition is superior to its form. The works of his later years contain figural depictions that are more theatrical than descriptive in their forms. Without being melodramatic, El Greco manages to convey pathos in his ecclesial renderings. His tendency to stretch out his figures is amplified in his altarpiece works. In his completion of The Virgin of the Immaculate Conception, El Greco had requested that the altarpiece be lengthened so as to not compromise the length of the Virgin's figure.Despite the criticism El Greco faced during the span of his artistic career, especially in his later years, his works found admirers and inspired the innovations of artists from the 19th century onward. Beginning with artists such as Eugène Delacroix and Édouard Manet, who were drawn to his use of color and expression, the creative correspondence continued into the 20th century. His muddling of space and the forms which occupy it became a pictorial device later employed by modern artists such as Paul Cézanne and Pablo Picasso. This led to El Greco being credited as the forefather of Expressionism and Cubism. The symbolists were influenced by the reserved figural expression the old master portrayed in his pictures, referencing them for their own works. Rainer Maria Rilke and Nikos Kazantzakis, literary artists, were bemused to write by the mystical character rumored (by scholars) as one having been possessed by El Greco in addition to the artworks he produced.. A collection of poetic works by Rilke, (Himmelfahrt Mariae I.II., 1913), were written after the poet had viewed The Virgin of the Immaculate Conception. Contemporary artists as well, such as Kysa Johnson, in her specific use of The Virgin of the Immaculate Conception as a basis for her works, have been influenced by the 16th-and-early-17th-century artist.
El Greco symbolists Expressionism Kysa Johnson Rainer Maria Rilke Immaculate Conception Cubism pathos Eugène Delacroix Venice Nikos Kazantzakis Édouard Manet Paul Cézanne Pablo Picasso