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Granada, Albaicin neighborhood |
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Watercolor |
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24 x 18 in |
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$880 |
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Giclee Print: $230 |
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Description |
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The first time I experienced Granada, I sat in a little plaza in the hills of the Albaicin barrio and made multiple sketches of the Alhambra at sunset. Only when my skills improved, many years later, was I able to finish this project at my studio.
This painting is part of the series "Homage to THE CITY, a threatened species".
This series of paintings was inspired by my love for the "City" AS THE ORIGIN OF CIVILIZATION. I want to emphasize this concept, however obvious and redundant: the word civilization derives from the word for city, CIVITAS. Rome legated this concept to future generations.
We all know that the world's cities, as the place and structure of human interactions, IS THREATENED. When the city of Rome, the prototype of 'civitas', fell and desintegrated in 476 AD, people moved into the countryside and took refuge in the castle, which became the center of social life during more than a thousand years.
As Professor Eugene Weber of UCLA, points out, nowadays we take cities for granted. What cities do for human beings: diverse interactions, rapid communication of news and culture and intense cross-fertilization of ideas, is assumed as something given and eternal. However CITIES ARE EXTREMELY FRAGILE and they can disappear as they did for more than a thousand years during the dark period of the Middle Ages, with it's feudal fragmentation, isolation and ignorance.
The cities, THE PUBLIC SPACE and therefore, civilization are threatened from outside and from within.
I paint cities because I want to render homage to the space that they provide for our spiritual and intellectual development, with their institutions whether they are cafes or universities
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