SPAIN

The Prado Museum is Spain's finest Museum, and one of the best in Europe. Inside this Neoclassical building you can find over 3,000 paintings.The Prado Museum has a formidable collection of Italian masterpieces, with works by Titian, Raphael, Tintoretto and Botticelli. A great collection of Flemish masterpieces, with works by Van Dyck, Albrecht Dürer, van der Weyden, Peter Breughel the Elder and Rubens. But the best part of the museum is the Velazquez and Goya sections.

El Greco (1541-1614). It was during the reign of Philip II that the first great genius of Spanish painting, El Greco, settled in the country. He was born in Crete and worked in Italy before moving to Toledo in about 1577. His highly emotional style gave powerful expression to the religious fervor of his adopted country, but it was not to Philip's taste. El Greco consequently enjoyed little royal patronage, but he produced a succession of magnificent altarpieces for churches in Toledo. His most famous piece The view of Toledo is astonishing.

Diego Velázquez (1599-1660). The artist probably most loved by the Spanish people is Velázquez who painted religious pictures and also occasional mythological scenes and tavern scenes with a prominent still-life element. He worked primarily as a portraitist, and in this field he was acknowledged as one of the greatest artists the world has ever known.  His masterpiece, Las Meninas (The Maids of Honor, 1656, Prado), is a stunning group portrait of the royal family and Velázquez himself in the act of painting (photo top right of this page).

Francisco Goya (1746-1828). The greatest painter of his time in Spain and also probably the most powerful and original figure in the visual arts in the whole of Europe was Francisco Goya. In his time he was best known as a portraitist, Los Fusilamentos del 3 de mayo en Madrid, 1814, but he is now equally renowned for other types of work, including the powerful engravings that he made showing the atrocities of the French occupation of Spain during the Napoleonic Wars.

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973). One of the most prolific artists in history was Pablo Picasso who spent most of his life in France but his work often used imagery from his native country (the bullfight was a favorite subject) and his most famous painting—Guernica (1937, Centro Cultural de la Reina Sofia, Madrid)—was inspired by his revulsion at the bombing of the Basque town during the Spanish Civil War.

Salvador Dalí (1904-1989). A flamboyant painter and sometime writer, sculptor and experimental film-maker, Salvador Dali was probably the greatest Surrealist artist, using bizarre dream imagery to create unforgettable and unmistakable landscapes of his inner world. His most famous work is The Persistence Of Memory.

MEXICO

The marriage of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo is one of the most famous alliances between artists. It is a well-known fact that they had a passionate and stormy relationship, filled with great love and also betrayals. They both had incredible talents and vision, but Diego's work would be more public and monumental, whereas Frida's was more personal and intimate in scale.
 

Frida Kahlo, born Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón, lived from July 6, 1907 to July 13, 1954. During her short lived life, she had many accomplishments. She was a surrealist artist who expressed her feelings and thoughts through her paintings. To the public she was a high spirited rebellious woman. Her paintings were full of personal content. They expressed her internal feelings. Her creative style was always breathtaking yet bewildering. Frida was probably the most idolized woman artist of her time and "today, she is a figure of legendary power whose work inspires excitement and awe throughout the world."
 

Diego Rivera was a Mexican painter and muralist born in Guanajuato City, Guanajuato. Studied painting in Mexico before going to Europe in 1907.
While in Europe he took up cubism and had exhibitions in Paris and Madrid in 1913; he then had a show in New York City in 1916. In 1921 he returned to Mexico, where he undertook government-sponsored murals that reflected his communist politics in historical contexts. His personal life was as dramatic as his artwork. In 1929, he married Kahlo who was roughly 20 years younger. The two had a passionate, but stormy relationship, divorcing once in 1939 only to remarry later. She died in 1954. He then married Emma Hurtado, his art dealer. Rivera died of heart failure on November 24, 1957, in Mexico City, Mexico.
Rivera's talent for historical murals and his tributes to earthy folk traditions made him one of the most influential artists in the Americas and one of Mexico's most beloved painters

LATIN AMERICA

Fernando Botero, Colombian painter. In 1948, he started work as an illustrator. In 1950, he went to Europe, where he attended the Academy of San Fernando in Madrid, copied Velázquez and Goya in the Prado and admired the frescoes in Florence. He went on a long visit to Mexico in 1956-57 and the experience of Muralism significantly influenced his future direction. In his own work, he introduced inflated forms, puffing up to an exaggerated size human figures, natural features, and objects of all kinds, celebrating the life within them while mocking their role in the world. Provincia di Roma is one of his most famous pieces. He combined the regional with the universal, constantly referring to his native Colombia and also creating elaborate parodies of works of art from the past. Not without humor, the symbols of power and authority everywhere - presidents, soldiers and churchmen - are targeted in his attacks on a society still infantile in its behavior."