Toulouse Lautrec + Diego Velázquez exhibitions

On 17th of December we went to the CosmoCaixa to see the exhibition of Toulouse Lautrec, an artist included in the poster movement. He was known to be one of the brave artist to fight against the ideals imposed by the Academy of Fine Arts and start the movement of breakdown and originality. 

In this exhibition, we could see different works. Some aspects that actually got my attention were, first of all, that the firsts cabarets were places in which many artists used to meet to discuss and share their ideas. Those cabarets were not the places we might relate to nowadays, these areas where divided into two: the one exclusively for artists and the other one opened to the public. Then, the guide introduced the Chats noirs, two of them opened, but because of the loss of innocence they had to close down. Afterwards, the guide presented us the name of Moulin Rouge (as can be seen in the picture), which was opened around the 60s by a Catalan and it was at this time when the concept of cabaret as we know today arose.
The exhibition mainly consisted in posters which were created as a street art that wasn't taken into consideration by the Academy.
From this exhibition I can highlight the ideas mentioned above. Although the guide was quite a good communicator, the rushing prevent me from acquiring more ideas and understanding a bit deeper what she was explaining us. 

Apart from that, we had the chance to go and see the Velázquez exclusive exhibition, as it would be there for a limited period of time. We didn't have a guide to show and explain us the portraits and different works, so it was quite difficult to deep in the meaning and the intention of the artist had when painting and creating those works. What I noticed was that many mythological creatures and characters appeared in different portraits; nevertherless, only of was from him: Marte. Not all the creations were done by Velázquez, but they related to him, to the Spanish Royal Collections and to the "Segle d'Or". In addition to this, we discussed one portrait "El Príncipe Baltasar Carlos a caballo" which at the first look, one could notice that the horse was pretty fat, that was why we had to look at it from below in order to appreciate properly the effect it had on it. 

All in all, I have to admit that doing the tour with a tourist helped me a lot to understand the intentions and the background of the works; although we did it quickly it was better than going by ourselves. Of course in the Velazquez one we could go in our rhythm, but I missed some kind of explanation and aid to comprehend it.