The poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) travelled extensively in Russia and Europe. Along the way he fell in with many artists, spending time in the creative colony in Worpswede near Bremen, where he married the sculptor Clara Westhoff, and befriending Auguste Rodin in Paris. To mark the centenary of Rilke’s death, the Prado is exploring the influence of Spanish painting on his poetry (17 November–7 March 2027). The months Rilke spent in Toledo and Ronda in 1912–13 resulted in works such as The Spanish Trilogy and ‘The Raising of Lazarus’. But even before he visited Spain, seeing the country’s art elsewhere had left its mark: Rilke’s early writings include a sonnet on Velázquez and musings on Murillo, and during a trip to Paris he became especially interested in El Greco, whose View of Toledo (c. 1599–1600) seems almost Post-Impressionist in its distortion of landscape.
Find out more from the Prado’s website.
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