El Greco

The highly proclaimed artist El Greco was

born in the year 1541, towards the end of the
renaissance, in the city of Heraklion, Crete. His
original name given to him was Domnikos
Theotokpoulos which, in greek, is then written as
. During the time period
that El Greco lived in, the island of Crete was ruled
by the Republic of Venice. All throughout his life, El
Greco had a fascination for art and went on to
research art at the Cretan School. At the Cretan
School he studied icon painting with Post-Byzantine
artistic techniques with a blend of Eastern and
Western artistic traditions. The Cretan School was the most prestigious school in
all of Greece. After he graduated the school he opened his own workshop where he
painted his very first publicly released piece, The Dormition of the Virgin. In the
year 1567 El Greco moved to the city of Venice, Italy. El Greco was said to have
changed his genre and style as he changed his location, adopting different cultures
art styles that were most popular or interesting. In his time in Venice his art form
switched from a Post-Byzantine genre to a style resembling ancient Roman art. Ten
years later ,1577, El Greco moved the country of Spain where he got his nickname
El Greco, which means The Greek because of his greek origins. While he was
living in spain he painted his most notable work, The Burial of the Count of Orgaz.
He of course had many other recognizable achievements such as the
Purification of the Temple which he made during the seemingly short amount of
time that he spent living in Venice that is also widely recognized as a beautiful
piece of art depicting Jesus Christ driving the money changers from a holy temple.
Many well respected scholars consider this piece of art to belong to the Italian
Renaissance because El Greco made it while he was a resident of Venice, as well
as it being made in the style of the ancient Romans/Italian Renaissance. Paintings

like this are the reason that El Greco is famous and so well remembered. If El
Greco hadnt pursued art he wouldnt have made such a variety of artwork. During
his time in spain he invented a new style for his artwork, Cubism. This technique
can be especially seen in his piece, The Opening of the Fifth Seal. In this piece El
Greco has painted people with an extremely high amount of geometric patterns for
his time. Because of this painting El Greco is called, The Father of Cubism. This
genre has been adopted and diversified upon in the 20th century by great artists
like Pablo Picasso, and Salvador Dali. Every time El Greco put his brush to paper
he shaped the future of art and how we see it a little bit more.