Programme Jan – Jun 2026

SPANISH ART AND ARCHITECTURE
Spanish art and architecture have contributed greatly to Western Art over the centuries but is often side-lined in favour of French and Italian
art. However, Spain has had important and influential artists and Spanish art also has distinctive characteristics arising from its unique,
often powerful history and geographical location. This programme addresses Velásquez, El Greco and Gaudi individually as particularly
influential artists. It also more generally explores Moorish architecture, the Spanish Golden Age, Surrealism, the art of the Spanish Civil war
and, in the 19th century, art from Goya to Sorolla.

Wednesday 14 January 2026 10.30-12.30, The Arc, Jewry Street, Winchester
The Spanish Surrealists Illustrated seminar by Barry Venning
The Surrealist movement was officially launched in Paris in 1924 withthe publication of André Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto, after which Paris remained the primary hub of Surrealist activity in the 1920s and early 1930s. It soon became, however, an international movement and
many of its most significant, innovative and celebrated members were Spanish. Joan Miró (1893-1983) was close to the movement from its
inception and was hailed by André Breton as ‘the most surrealist of us all’. Salvador Dali (1904-1989) and his friend and collaborator, the
great film-maker, Luis Buñuel (1900-1983) produced paintings and movies that drew on Freud’s writings on the unconscious and, in so
doing, challenged bourgeois views of society, morality and reality. Recent research and exhibitions have demonstrated that there were
others who made an important contribution to Spanish Surrealism. They include Óscar Dominguez (1906-57), Remedios Varo (1908-1963)
and the artist and graphic designer Josep Renau (1907-1982), all of whom will feature in the seminar. Spanish Surrealism is distinctive for
its deep ties to Spanish culture, history, and identity, and when the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, Surrealism becomes one of the
outlets for channelling the drama and disasters of the conflict.

Wednesday 28 January 2026 10.30-12.30, The Arc, Jewry Street, Winchester
Moorish Architecture: the Legacy of a Vanished Kingdom Illustrated seminar by Ian Cockburn
The Alhambra of Granada, the Great Mosque of Córdoba and the Alcázar of Seville are the most impressive monuments to the architectural creativity of the Moors in Spain, but there are many others worthy of mention. The classical origins that influenced the Moorish style are less  well-known, but fascinating to explore, as too is the unique interior decorative style developed by the Moors, which gives their architecture its beauty and an exotic appeal so strong that the Christians sometimes copied it, even as they slowly reconquered the territory from Islamic rulers. The Great Mosque of Córdoba, begun in 785AD, was the first major architectural accomplishment of Al Andalus, as the Moors called their new kingdom, and became the model on which all further Moorish monumental architecture was based. Their swan-song was the Alhambra fortress-palace in Granada, whose beauty has arguably not been surpassed since it fell to the Catholic Monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabel, in 1492AD. This lecture provides an introduction to Moorish architecture, examining its origins and its evolutions over nearly 800 years of Islamic rule in the Iberian Peninsula.

Wednesday 11 February 2026 10.30-12.30, The Arc, Jewry Street, Winchester
Velásquez: ‘The Great Magician of Art’ Illustrated seminar by Douglas Skeggs
Not always acknowledged nowadays, this 17th century Spanish artist is one of the most influential painters in the history of art. Born in Seville in 1599, where he made his name producing penetratingly observed scenes of everyday life, he moved to Madrid where his portraiture was so successful that by the age of 24 he was the only artist permitted to paint the King of Spain. After meeting Rubens he travelled to Italy to learn from the old masters, returning some years later to paint the iconic portrait of Pope Innocent X. In 1656 his images of the Spanish royal family reached their peak in the hauntingly beautiful Las Meninas, a complex, almost dreamlike mirror image. He himself appears in the picture wearing the order of Santiago, one of the highest aristocratic titles, awarded shortly before his death. In the following centuries the cool elegance of his style, his ability to discover a sense of dignity and humanity in even the simplest of subjects, coupled with his breathtakingly daring treatment of the paint was widely admired by generations of artists from Goya to Picasso, who famously described him as ‘The Great Magician of Art’.

Wednesday 11 March 2026 10.30-12.30, The Arc, Jewry Street, Winchester
El Greco of Toledo Illustrated seminar by Dr Jacqueline Cockburn
This lecture will consider El Greco’s arrival in Toledo in 1577 from Crete, his country of birth, via a short spell in Italy with the Farnese family. After criticizing Michelangelo, he was forced to leave and was given help to relocate to Spain. We know little about his personal circumstances. Was he educated or married? We know he owned many books and annotated them carefully. We know too that he spoke languages, so we may be able to shed life on his education. After considering his Byzantine influences, we will show his debt to Italian Renaissance artists but also unravel his fall out with Philip II and the Church. El Greco, it would seem, was a non-conformist who flouted the rules of Catholicism in dramatic ways, despite the menacing presence of the Inquisition with whom he may have worked. Finally, we will consider his writings and his relationship with the city of Toledo where he lived until his death in 1614. We will discuss why he is one of the most revered artists today, yet after his death he was unknown for 300 years before 20th century artists such as Picasso revived him.

Wednesday 25 March 2026 10.30-12.30, The Arc, Jewry Street, Winchester
Artists’ Responses to the Spanish Civil War Illustrated seminar by Monica Bohm-Duchen
Although rightly perceived at the time as a testing ground for the struggle between fascism and democracy and as the ideological and
military prelude to the global conflict of 1939-45, the Spanish Civil War of 1936-9 was primarily a bitter and brutal civil war, with enduring
domestic consequences that would reach far into the future. And as the Republican politician Ángel Ossorio y Gallardo declared in 1937:
‘The strengthening and development of culture, like the problems of public education, today occupy the Spanish government no less than
the war itself.’ The main part of this session will thus consider the battle for culture waged within Spain itself as well as the responses of
Spanish artists-in-exile such as Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró and Salvador Dalí. It will also look at the work of more traditional figurative artists
(most, but not all, supporters of the Nationalists) such as Santiago Pelegrín, Horacio Ferrer and Francisco Mateos. The second part will
examine the artistic responses of (mostly but not exclusively pro Republican) non-Spaniards such as René Magritte, André Fougeron and
Alfonso Siqueiros, with particular emphasis on the work of British artists including Henry Moore, Frank Brangwyn, Edward Burra and
Percy Wyndham Lewis.

Wednesday 22 April 2026 10.30-12.30, The Arc, Jewry Street, Winchester
A Celebration of Nature: Antoni Gaudi Illustrated seminar by Dr Jacqueline Cockburn
This year marks the centenary of Gaudi’s death on 10th June 1926: struck by a tram, hospitalised as a homeless person and then, once
recognised, given a national funeral. Barcelona will rise to its feet in 2026 to celebrate Gaudi the man and Gaudi the saint. Pope Francis
declared him ‘venerable’ in April 2025 and over the coming months we can watch as his canonisation is hotly debated. This lecture will
consider his miraculous buildings. We will explore his inspirations from nature: honeycombs, spiders’ webs, armadillos and mushrooms, trees wafting in the wind, palm leaves and whales’ bellies laid bare. He also applied a rigid and careful mathematical knowledge which is still
studied with awe, especially by those who have conserved and continued his buildings. We will explore the ceramicists he worked with, his innovative use of ironwork and tiling and the way he filled the streets of Barcelona with his extraordinary buildings, frequently commissioned by his patron Eusebi Gűell. We will end by comparing him to two other Catalan architects working at the same time: Doménech y Muntaner and Puig y Cadafalch.

Wednesday 6 May 2026 10.30-12.30, The Arc, Jewry Street, Winchester
Goya to Sorolla: Spanish Art Between Tradition and Modernity Illustrated seminar by Dr Kathy McLauchlan
Drawing on a tradition going back to El Greco, Zurbarán and Velázquez, Spain saw a revival in its national school during the 19th century. Foreign artists and collecters were attracted by the qualities of realism, drama and expressive power associated with Spanish painting. Yet at the same time, there was a widespread feeling – both in Spain and abroad – that its contemporary artists had lost their way and were no match for their great predecessors. Many Spanish painters of the 19th century sought a new impetus in the example of French contemporary art. They engaged with the major innovative trends of the time, from Romanticism to Impressionism. This seminar explores the relationship between the art worlds of Spain and Northern Europe during this period, highlighting the leading roles Spanish artists played within the Parisian art world. More than simply followers, painters like Francisco de Goya, Mariano Fortuny and Joaquín Sorolla helped to shape the development of early modern art.

Wednesday 10 June 2026 10.30-12.30, The Arc, Jewry Street, Winchester
Painting and Sculpture in the Spanish Golden Age Illustrated seminar by Dr Marta P Cacho Casal
The early modern period in Spain is often called the Siglo de Oro, the Golden Age, the period 1492 to 1659, from the end of the Reconquista
(ending Muslim rule in Spain) to the Treaty of the Pyrenees (ending the Franco-Spanish war). While the term became dominant later, early
moderns did not perceive their age as ‘Golden’, they rather saw themselves living in an ‘iron age’, as distinct from the classical period. Perception and deception (desengaño) are some of the most popular themes of the period, one that gave birth to Las Meninas and Don Quijote but also coincided with economic decline and the Spanish colonial empire, one of the largest in history. We will consider well known sites and artists, including the Hospital de la Caridad of Seville, which was decorated by two of the most popular artists of the city, Bartolomé  Esteban Murillo and Juan de Valdés Leal; we will look at the dramatic style of Spanish polychrome sculpture, with artists such as Juan Martínez Montañés; and we will examine the visceral paintings of Jusepe Ribera and the sublime art of Francisco de Zurbarán – the subject of a major exhibition at the National Gallery this spring.