Lifestyles Works

My
FavouriteSpanish
Work
THE CITY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
Santiago Calatrava
Made up of: L'Hemisfèric, The
Sciences Museum, L'Umbracle, The
Oceanographic, The Bridge of l'Assut
de l'Or and The Ágora.
Its location is excellent, a privileged place: the old Turia’s riverbed, a completely
open area. It is an interesting cultural leisure offer that turns this architectural
work into a center for culture and leisure. This impressive architecture work
becomes a place to learn and have fun in a participative way.
In this project we highlight The Sciences Museum because it is an instrument for
education that through varied activities reactivates the critical capacity of its
visitors and informs about the evolution of life and technological and scientific
developments in a didactic and interactive way. This museum supports the
different schools in their educational activities and that keeps it alive.
We also highlight the L'Umbracle Promenade, where nature, the sky and the water
form an architectural whole of great beauty.
In our opinion, this architectural work is a landscape and monument symbol for the
city of Valencia.
PERMANENT UNIVERSITY
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THE SAGRADA FAMILIA
Antonio Gaudí
The Expiatory Church of the Holy Family, known as
The Sagrada Familia, is a large catholic basilica of
Barcelona, designed by the Spanish architect
Antoni Gaudí. Its construction began in 1882 and it
is ongoing. It is the masterpiece of Gaudí and the
greatest exponent of Catalonian modernist
architecture.
Its construction began with a neo-gothic style but when Gaudí took on the project, its
style was completely changed. As he usually worked, from general outlines of the
building, he improvised its construction as the work moved forward. He took on the
project with the young age of 31 and he devoted the rest of his life to it.
One of his most innovative ideas was the design of the high round conical towers whose
peaks stick out above the portals being narrower at their highest point. He designed
them with a parabolic torsion giving the whole facade an upward tendency with many
windows that perforate the tower in spiral shape.
Gaudí died in 1926; only one tower had been built. From the project of the building
there were only some plans and a plaster model quite damaged during the Spanish Civil
War.
The church was consecrated and acknowledged as minor basilica on the 7th of
November 2010 by the Pope Benedicto XVI.
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MUSIC BANDSTAND
Miguel López González
This small bandstand built in 1954 and designed
by the architect from Alicante Miguel López, is
located
in
the
Alicante’s
Promenade.
Technically it is a construction made of
reinforced concrete that gives a slender
appearance, without columns, to a modern
design. Aesthetics and acoustic properties
achieve
perfect
harmony
with
the
environment.
This is the visible part of the work that I chose but I am very interested in the
determined performance of this rationalist architect, with numerous buildings with a
rationalist style in the city. In my opinion, this work and the other ones reflect that his
artistic career was braked by the end of the Civil War. Due to his large academic
education he adapted to the imposed academicist and neo-imperialist criteria (Town
Hall’s Square), but everytime he could, as in this work, he followed his convictions of
modernity. From the 50’s his few turns to modernity where accepted given his artistic
relevance and a slight political openness. Later on, during the 60’s, when the country
wanted to be seen as immersed in a period of modernity and development, this
architect was able to create excellent works of rationalist modernism.
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S PAN I S H DAN C E
It is made up of a series of practical disciplines:
BALLET
To have a complete education as a dancer in any discipline
it is necessary to study ballet to adquire the essential
techniques.
CASTANETS
As ultimate Spanish cultural patrimony, castanets
represent a very important part of the Spanish music and
dance.
CLASSICAL SPANISH
It is the most sophisticated way of dance with music styles
like Falla, Albéniz, Granados, Turína. His aesthetics remind
us the flamenco dance and folklore.
BOLERA’S SCHOOL
It studies the Spanish dance of the 18th century. Known as “Goyescas”, it is danced with
costumes of the time of the painter Goya.
FLAMENCO
It is the most famous Spanish dance, the most universal given its wide spreading.
FOLKLORE
Spain is one of the richest countries in Folklore variety. Every region has its typical
dances with centuries of antiquity, a real regional cultural expression.
PERMANENT UNIVERSITY
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WHITE DARKNESS
Nacho Duato
White Darkness is a choreography that fascinates and produces
the same impression during the years. It might be one of the
masterpieces of Nacho Duato and it is essential in his wide
creative repertoire. It has become richer with the time that has
transformed it into a classic; a perfect combination of light and
shadow.
The inspiration of his creator was an open meditation about the world of drugs. It is not a
“judgement of values” but an invitation to think about a present, harmful and many times
controversial subject. It is about the effect that drugs may cause in our social behaviour, our
ability to communicate with others and in our lives in general. On the stage, the
choreographer shows how drugs dominate the drug addicts to the point that they become a
puppet, a marionette that under its influence narrows their universe to the extreme. All
this, expressed through dance, mostly in couples, becomes “pure poetry in movement”.
It tells a story in which the public is able to understand the initial emotional unbalance of
the main character who seeks a way out in a love relationship with a person that will lead
her to disaster. This person becomes a Prince of Darkness; owner and lord of a particular
world through the white dust. Likewise, the adequate use of plastic elements to visualize
drugs through the rain of this substance makes a contrast with the black color of the stage
and gives sense to the title: White Darkness.
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E S T R E L L A (S T A R)
Eusebio Sempere
One of the most beautiful
sculptures
of
Eusebio
Sempere is Estrella, although it
is also known with the name of
Estrella varada (Rod Star),
located in the city of Alicante.
He
uses
a
regular
dodecahedron
from
which
chroming steel rods of 3cm
diameter come out. The rods of
the superior part are longer.
The rods gather in a revolving axis that coincides with one of the
rotation axis of the dodecahedron that unites two opposed faces.
The sculpture was made in chroming steel in 1978.
PERMANENT UNIVERSITY
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SUITE LEVANTINA
Óscar Esplá
I have chosen this work because the composer received with it
his first award and that was what motivated him to devote
himself completely to music and to continue obtaining success
and become a renowned composer.
In 1903, with the age of 17, Óscar Esplá studied in Barcelona
Industrial Engineering and also Arts, receiving harmony lessons
from Sánchez Gavagan, who was then in 1904 director of the
Music Conservatory of the Institute of Barcelona.
During his period of education as engineer he composed his famous Suite in A flat, he
presented it to the International Contest of the National Gesellschaft “Die Musik” of
Vienna and won the First Award, triumphing over numerous European scores and
receiving 3.000 marks; Richard Strauss and Camille Saint-Saëns were members of the
jury. Due to this success of great importance for Spain and as an iniciative of Gabriel
Miró –“his spiritual brother” who would name him Walter Starkie– the Town Hall of
Alicante embraced the musician honoring him with celebrations on the 29th of January
1911. Then, just about to finish his studies of Engineering, he decided to devote
himself completely to music because “music was stronger in me that the other two
studies”, words of the musician.
PERMANENT UNIVERSITY
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PASEO A ORILLAS DEL MAR (A WALK BY THE SEASHORE)
ASDF
Joaquín Sorolla
Paseo a orillas del mar, also known as Paseo por la playa (A walk by
the beach), painted in 1909, is one of the most famous paintings of
the Valencian painter Joaquín Sorolla. He created this work in a
moment of vital fulfillment and professional success, after having
had success in the United States. Maybe that is why during this
period there are many images like this one, serene but also lively,
reflecting great light and colour.
In this work he paints his wife, Clotilde Garcia, holding a lady’s umbrella and his older daughter,
Maria Clotilde having a walk by the beach of Valencia at sunset, with the sea breeze moving their
filmy dresses in a concept of movement that has a lot to do with the pararell position of the two
women and the movement in the air of the gauzes, the lady’s umbrella and the water of the sea.
The contrast of colours make the rest and achieve a luminosity effect that gathers the elegance
of the scene with an unquestionable visual impact.
In the painting’s composition he eliminates the horizon line and creates water and sand through
long blue, mauve and turquoise-green brushstrokes. The breeze that can be noticed in the waves
of the dresses and their gauze adornments intensifies the feeling of momentary brevity of the
image. The “photographic framing” also contributes to this feeling with the frame cutting one of
the figure’s picture hat.
As to its stylistic classification, due to its loose brushstrokes, its light, colour and the movement
that it transmits, most of the authors classify it in the Spanish Post-impresionism.
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COMIENZO AUTOMÁTICO DE UN RETRATO DE GALA
(Automatic beginning of a Gala’s portrait)
Salvador Dalí
Gala was Dalí’s partner and wife but, above all
things, she was his muse. Few women have
been represented so many times.
Among all the portraits that Dalí painted to the
one and only woman of his life, Comienzo
automático de un retrato de Gala really
attracts my attention.
In this enigmatic work the painter shows his desire to experiment with
different degrees of the image’s termination.
Gala’s countenance, perfectly painted, stands out over the white background,
but this realistic representation it’s also full of symbolism: tree branches grow
from Gala’s head which refers to Apollo and Daphne’s myth.
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DOS NIÑOS COMIENDO MELÓN Y UVAS
(Two children eating melon and grapes)
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo
I had the chance to see this painting in a temporary exhibition in
Sevilla and the natural manner of the scene where two children enjoy
an improvised feast had an impact on me.
Dos niños comiendo melón y uvas represents a scene of Sevilla
affected by the economic crisis and the plague during the middle of
the 17th century. In the image you can see two children, dirty and
clothed in rags, eating fruit that they had to steal to have something
to eat.
Few colours have been used in this picture but they have been combined with
inteligence. The contrast between black and white is reduced with the range of greens
and ochers. The loose brushstroke gives to the painting a soft plasticity, typical of the
school of Venice. It is a genre painting but also a still life painting. It is a genre painting
because it represents two typical children of Sevilla during that time. It is a still life
painting because fruit plays a main role in it. Murillo used it as an excuse to show his
refined technique, as can be seen in the grapes’ shine and transparency, and his
observation of every detail, as can be appreciated in the two flies that landed on the
melon held by the child on the right side and on the fruit waste on the floor.
Dos niños comiendo melón y uvas is one of the most relevant paintings of Murillo
because it helped him to carry out a series of paintings about childhood in poverty,
which he always represented with respect.
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E L Ú L T I M O C A T Ó N (The Last Caton)
Matilde Asensi
I discovered this writer from Alicante by
reading this book. Its pages full with intense
adventures seeking the Vera Cruz, the cross
where Jesus died, captivated me.
This work, pioneer in its genre, gathers the
interest for religions, relics, secret societies
and universal literature’s works, such as The
Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, that has
always been alive. A paleographer of the
Vatican Secret Archive, an archaeologist of
Alexandria and a captain of the Swiss Guard
will go through seven proofs, based in the
seven capital sins, that will put their lives in
danger and will make them discover secrets
hidden in Rome, Ravenna, Jerusalem,
Athens, Istanbul, Alexandria and Antioch.
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EL VIAJ E A N IN GU NA PARTE
(Voyage to Nowhere)
Fernando Fernán Gómez
“El viaje a ninguna parte” of Fernando
Fernán Gómez is one of his best novels that
would later on be adapted into a great
movie which he directed, whose script he
wrote and in which he also interpreted one
of the main characters himself.
The movie shows the terrible and at the
same time wonderful life of comedians in
the middle of the last century. Human
poverty in all its facets, hunger, those
journeys acting in towns poorer than
themselves and with characters that reflect
all different tragedies of a man’s life.
All this mixed with irony, sarcasm, criticizing everything but with great
sense of humor, leaves the bitter aftertaste of a well-done work at the end
of the book or the movie.
PERMANENT UNIVERSITY
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CHEMA MADOZ
He isolates and gets
things out of order, he
confronts
and
manipulates until he gets
to show a new order, a
hidden facet of the sense,
a new symbolic truth that
results from the impact
caused by the disorder of
our logic.
All his works contain great creativity, that’s why it is very difficult to
choose one of them but I have chosen photography for its simplicity. He
comes out with the idea of placing a cage before a simple cloud in the
sky and so he creates a work of art that everyone can understand.
That’s how almost all his works are.
PERMANENT UNIVERSITY
UNIVERSITY OF ALICANTE
GOOGLEGRAMS
Joan Fontcuberta
It is made up of photographies
from different origins that are
reconstructed
with
images
obtained by a freeware photomosaic program connected on line
with the search engine Google and
an
interactive
digital
video
installation. With this series of
images
he
brings
together
photographic
images,
digital
photography
and
the
new
technologies. Through the main
image made up of many small
images gathered as a mosaic, the
artist plays with the observer placing in his mind a fine line that separates what is real from
fiction, what is true and false, certainty and chance.
Undoubtedly, what disturbs the most in Fontcuberta’s work is the emphatic presence of his works
through images that are very easy to recognize and the background of their meaning. What we
think we see or understand just by looking it’s only an illusion of what is hidden and can only be
discovered when you draw closer and deepen in the work. As it’s usual in his work, the observer’s
perceptive process becomes the object of the artist’s illusory conspiracies.
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M O RTAD E LO
He is the soul of
the two secret
agents. He has an
innate ability to
dress up and also to get in
trouble. He is always arguing
with his boss or playing jokes
on him. However, most of the
times it is him who comes up
with a crazy strategy to solve
the cases that the “Súper”
assigns them.
M O R T A D E L O
AND F I L E M Ó N
Francisco Ibáñez
FILEMÓN
Theoretically he is the brain
of the two. He is Mortadelo’s
boss and partner. They do
almost everything together and
they understand each other very well.
Most of the times Filemón is to blame for
Mortadelo’s blunders and that’s when he
really flies into temper. But they are
inseparable friends after all.
EL SÚPER
He is the boss of Mortadelo and Filemón and the superintendent
of the “T.I.A”. He contacts the agents in the most ingenious ways
to assign them all sorts of missions. He has a foul mood when he
gets angry.
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My
Favourite Spanish
Work
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UNIVERSITY
LITERATURE