Summary
By juxtaposing analyzes on El Greco and Oswaldo Goeldi, art historian Rodrigo Naves proposes a unique and surprising dialogue about two figures who made the opacity of the world their raw material. Nearly three centuries separate the painting of El Greco (Spain 1541-1614) from the woodcuts of Oswaldo Goeldi (Brazil 1895-1961). In this richly illustrated book, with a chronology of artists and reading tips, Rodrigo Naves plunges into the world of ambiguities of these two masters. The author recounts Goeldi's childhood and adolescence in Switzerland, his admiration for Alfred Kubin, his first contacts with woodcuts, his view of the periphery of the world. And he comments on the years spent by El Greco in Venice, the influence of Tiziano and Tintoretto, the proximity and distance with Mannerism. If, in El Greco, "light is a painting that, instead of purifying, coagulates", in Goeldi, "in the gloomy areas of charcoal drawings, things are more hidden than shown". Here, the world of shadows is the only reality, and this leads us to let ourselves be carried away by Naves' obsessions, his look at art and the world.