El Greco: Mystic Under the Blazing Sun - Gallery of the Masters

In 1575, a foreigner came to live within the walls of Toledo, the spiritual center of Spain. He came from Greece, from the island of Crete: His name was Kyriakos Theotocopoulos. The people of Toledo called him El Greco, the Greek. At the court of the Spanish King El Greco had had no success, but the high dignitaries of Toledo, the bastion of Spanish Catholicism, liked his paintings with their somber, passionate religiousness. Influenced by the icon painting in his home country and by his years in Venice as a pupil of Titian, El Greco developed his unmistakable, expressive style: The elongated figures in his pictures, painted in flickering forms and lines and the dramatic character of his landscapes became his hallmark. This informative and entertaining documentary was filmed in the Prado Museum and in the churches and cloisters of Toledo where El Greco offset the blazing, summery light with dark, cool colors: This unique program presents these contrasts in impressive shots and draws a new picture of this artist, whose baffling modernity has still not lost any of it's fascination.