Abc gallery el greco biography

El Greco (Spanish for “the Greek”, real name Domenikos Theotokopoulos, 1541, Candia, Crete – April 7, 1614, Toledo, Spain) is a Spanish painter of Greek origin.

He has been a popular and highly sought master during his lifetime, but he was buried in oblivion for as long as three centuries after his death. Due to his motley history, his pictures have absorbed the features of several powerful schools: Byzantine icon painting, Italian Renaissance and Mannerism, all dressed up in Spanish mysticism.

After his “re-discovery”, the peculiar and poorly classifiable artworks of the Spanish Greek have been designated as origins of modernism; his works have come to be valued as highly as the recognized masterpieces of the Old Masters.

Creative features of the Spanish artist El Greco.

His nature made him move from country to country, thus the painter took the features he liked most from each of the schools he faced. The calligraphic accuracy of Cretan painting,