With Francisco Goya, between the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Spanish painting entered the modern age. Since then Spain has given world art some of its greatest figures.
The nineteenth century
After Goya, Spanish Romanticism had painters such as Leonardo Alenza and Eugenio Lucas, and late-century realism the impressive history paintings of Eduardo Rosales and Antonio Gisbert. The Valencian Joaquín Sorolla (1863-1923) became world-famous for his beach scenes full of Mediterranean light: his house in Madrid is a museum. In Catalonia Ramon Casas and Santiago Rusiñol led the artistic life around the Els Quatre Gats café.
Catalan modernisme
Between 1880 and 1920 Barcelona was the capital of modernisme, the Catalan version of Art Nouveau, joining architecture, decorative arts and Catalan national identity. Besides Antoni Gaudí, its leaders were Lluís Domènech i Montaner, who built the Palau de la Música Catalana and the Sant Pau Hospital, both UNESCO sites, and Josep Puig i Cadafalch, with the Casa Amatller (see Barcelona).
The avant-garde
In the twentieth century the great Spanish artists worked mainly in Paris. Pablo Picasso invented Cubism with Braque, and the Madrid-born Juan Gris was one of its most rigorous exponents. The Catalan Joan Miró (1893-1983) created a language of signs, stars and pure colours close to Surrealism, leaving traces all over Barcelona (see the Miró Foundation) and in Palma de Mallorca, where he lived for many years. Salvador Dalí became the most famous face of Surrealism. The sculptor Julio González pioneered welded iron sculpture; María Blanchard and Maruja Mallo were among the most original artists of the period.
After the war
The civil war and dictatorship forced many artists into exile. In the 1950s, however, avant-garde groups emerged: Dau al Set in Barcelona, with Antoni Tàpies, master of matter painting, and El Paso in Madrid, with Antonio Saura, Manolo Millares and Rafael Canogar, leaders of Informalism. In the Basque Country the sculptors Eduardo Chillida, with his Comb of the Wind on the rocks of San Sebastián, and Jorge Oteiza renewed abstract sculpture. The Museum of Abstract Art in Cuenca, founded in 1966 by Fernando Zóbel in the Hanging Houses, is a symbolic place of those years.
From the Movida to today
With democracy, the 1980s Movida madrileña brought an explosion of creativity in painting, photography, comics and film. Painters such as Majorca-born Miquel Barceló and sculptors such as Jaume Plensa and Juan Muñoz have achieved international fame. Spain has also become a showcase for contemporary architecture, with Frank Gehry's Guggenheim in Bilbao, Santiago Calatrava's City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia, Seville's Metropol Parasol and the work of Pritzker Prize winner Rafael Moneo. The Reina Sofía in Madrid and MACBA in Barcelona are the great museums of contemporary art. See also art in Spain.