New Spanish Art Exhibit Opens at Fogg Museum

The first Boston exhibition of Spanish modernist abstract art yesterday opened at the Fogg Museum of Art with a reception for the friends, relatives and collectors of the artist, a Harvard alumnus who died two years ago.

Entitled "Creative Transformations," the exhibition is a retrospective of Fernando Zobel '49, who founded the artists' colony of Cuenca and was a leading Spanish painter until his death.

Zobel is best known for his series of paintings "Diaolgos," "conversations" with artists such as Rembrant or Lorenzo Lotto. His work is often associated with the informalist movement, which developed after the fall of the Spanish Republic and is especially color-sensitive.

The Fogg show surveys the abstract artist's painting from his earliest works to his death and includes sketches and photographs he used in composing a painting.

The exhibition shows "the unique way [Zobel had] of making a painting," Curator Peter F. Soriano said, dubbing the show a "working exhibition."

The exhibition is a rare glimpse at contemporary Spanish painting, museum officials said. Although such painting is well known in Spain, it is relatively unknown in the U.S.

"America has not been very strong in acknowledging the great Spanish abstract art of the 1960s," said Konrad Oberhuber, a curator of the exhibit.

Boston in particular has a reptuation for its closed view of art, Soriano said. But "Harvard has a tendency to show different things," he said. "That's its strength."

"This exhibition has relevance at Harvard, where Zobel was a student," Soriano said. "It makes sense [for the show] to be here," he added, saying that many of the selections for the show were made with a Harvard angle in mind.