Presented online via Zoom on April 26, 2023
Philippines Lecture Series
Speaker: Felipe Pereda, Fernando Zóbel de Ayala Professor of Spanish Art, History of Art+Architecture, Harvard University
Moderator: James Robson, James C. Kralik, and Yunli Lou Professor, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations; Harvard College Professor; Victor and William Fung Director, Asia Center, Harvard University
Abstract: Born in Manila (1924) and graduating from Harvard (1949’), Fernando Zobel Montojo (d. 1984) is best known, on the one hand, as an important figure of Spanish avantgarde abstraction, and on the other, as the founder of the first Contemporary Art Museum of Spain: the “Hanging Houses” museum, in Cuenca. A recent exhibition at the Prado Museum, Madrid (2022-23) has proposed to contemplate his life, and his work as a painter, not as an exemplary figure of the renewal of contemporary Spanish art on the postwar period, but instead, as the result of a complex life itinerary in search of a personal style and of his cultural identity.
