VELAZQUEZ

This catalog raisonne brings together Velazquez's complete works-jaw-droppingly reproduced in extra-large format with a selection of delicious enlarged details-with insightful commentary on how his paintings give equal attention to all that they contain. To him, an old woman frying eggs or a buffoon was as important as a Pope or a King. For him, form was subservient to light and color; the brushstrokes were markers to help the viewers reconstruct each picture mentally-concepts adopted vehemently by the Impressionists. Velazquez's greatest talent was creating beauty from the grotesque, imbuing each subject with a human liveliness rarely seen on canvas. In its extensive detail and comparisons, Jose Lopez-Rey's book reveals the development of this vision. Things are or are not, they exist or vanish, in the same way that Calderon felt that life was like a dream. In the work of Velazquez, the language is everything.