Everyday Poetry: Spanish Still Life Painting of the 17th and 18th Centuries

Colnaghi Madrid is pleased to announce its forthcoming exhibition, Everyday Poetry: Spanish Still Life Painting of the 17th and 18th Centuries, presented in partnership with Artur Ramon.

Everyday Poetry: Spanish Still Life Painting of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries is devoted to the emergence and development of the bodegón in Spain from the early seventeenth century to the Enlightenment. Bringing together approximately thirty works by artists including Juan van der Hamen, Juan de Zurbarán, Tomás Hiepes, Josefa de Óbidos, Pedro de Camprobín and Luis Meléndez, the exhibition traces the evolution of Spanish still life from its early austere formulations to the more elaborate and decorative compositions of the later period. Far from a minor genre, the bodegón occupied a central position in Spanish painting, offering artists a rigorous framework in which to explore naturalism and pictorial order.

The exhibition also highlights the work of Josefa de Óbidos, one of the few women working within the genre, whose paintings combine Sevillian naturalism with a distinctive compositional vitality. The trajectory concludes with the work of Luis Meléndez, whose still lifes of the eighteenth century distil the genre to its essentials, combining precision, sobriety and an almost scientific attention to everyday objects.