ACCIONA promotes el Prado’s paintings in the “Portrait of Spain” exhibition in Australia

The Spanish infrastructure, renewables, water and services group promotes the "Portrait of Spain. Masterpieces from the Prado" exhibition at Brisbane's Queensland Art Gallery (QAG) to be held from July to November 2012.

Around one hundred paintings trace Spain's pictorial art and the country's history from the 16th century to the early 20th.

ACCIONA, the Spanish infrastructure, renewables, water and services group, will promote "Portrait of Spain", an exhibition of paintings from Madrid's Prado Museum scheduled for summer 2012 at the Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane, Australia. The show will display around one hundred works (80 oil paintings and 20 carried out on paper) which condense the history of Spain and trace the historical development of painting in the country from the 16th century up to the early 20th.
The Chairman of Prado Museum's Board of Trustees, Plácido Arango, and the Chairman and the Executive Director of Art Exhibitions Australia (AEA), Harold Mitchell and Carol Henry, under the auspices of Spain's Minister of Culture, Ángeles González-Sinde, signed today an agreement on the future exhibition. The signing was attended also by the Australian Ambassador in Spain, Zorica McCarthy; the Vice-Chairman of ACCIONA, Juan Ignacio Entrecanales; the Director of the Prado Museum, Miguel Zugaza; and the Director of the Queensland Art Gallery, Tony Ellwood.

Support for international presence

ACCIONA is to collaborate on the art show as a Benefactor Member of the Prado Museum's international exhibitions program, in an effort to take Spanish culture across the globe. With the coming event-part of the Museum's "Prado International" exhibitions program-ACCIONA takes on the role of a unique ambassador for Spanish culture in Australia, a country in which the Company boasts a longstanding presence in the fields of infrastructures, renewables and water management.

"Portrait of Spain. Masterpieces from the Prado" is El Prado's first-ever exhibition in Australia and marks a major milestone in the Spanish gallery's program of international exhibitions, which includes previous shows held in Japan and China and the current exhibition at Russia's State Hermitage Museum, in Saint Petersburg.

The exhibition has been organized with the scientific supervision of the Prado's Head of Conservation of Spanish Painting up to 1700, Javier Portús, and thanks to the efforts of Art Exhibitions Australia, a not-for-profit organization which has been behind major art shows in Australia in collaboration with high-profile institutions including London's Tate Gallery, the Louvre, Picasso and Quai d'Orsay museums of Paris, and Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum, as well as major US museums and galleries such as New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art (MOMA).

A look back at three centuries of Spanish painting

Through a selection of one hundred-or-so works of art, "Portrait of Spain. Masterpieces from the Prado" invites spectators to reflect on more than three centuries of Spanish painting and on the internal and external factors that have influenced it.

The exhibition includes works by outstanding artists such as El Greco, Ribera, Zurbarán, Velázquez, Murillo, Valdés Leal, Carreño, Paret, Van der Hamen, Meléndez, Goya, Vicente López, Federico de Madrazo, Rosales, Fortuny, Beruete and Sorolla. Non-Spanish painters who set up their workshops in Spain or who had a major influence on Spanish painting also loom large, including Titian, Anthonis Mor, Rubens, Luca Giordano, Houasse, Tiepolo and Mengs.

Go to: Portrait of Spain: Masterpieces from the Prado" exhibition: http://www.acciona.com/about-acciona/other-challenges/-masterpieces-from-el-prado

Twitter:

• @ACCIONA_EN
• @QAGGoMA
• @museodelprado