Emotion of Beethoven’s music inspires Costa Almeria art exhibition

THE emotion of Beethoven’s music was the inspiration for a new art exhibition in Almeria city.
‘Variaciones plasticas en torno a Beethoven’ (Visual art revolving around Beethoven) has been put together by the Arte Ibañez Cosentino Foundation for the Almeria Museo de Arte Espacio 2 gallery to mark the 250^th anniversary of the great composer’s birth.
The exhibition features 27 works by Andres Garcia Ibañez, one of the leading figures in Spanish realism.
The artist said he first discovered the music of Beethoven when he was a child thanks to his maternal grandfather Jose Ibañez, and that he studied his work in depth when he was younger.
The result is 21 large oil paintings from his ‘Del corazon al corazon’ (From heart to heart) series, created almost 25 years ago when Garcia Ibañez was studying architecture, and six smaller oil paintings from the ‘La mascara de Beethoven’ (The mask of Beethoven) series painted in 2015.
The artist said the inspiration for the smaller works came from two plaster Beethoven death he bought after visiting the house where the composer was born in Germany.
“I placed the masks next to some roses which by the morning had dried and it created a symbolism which inspired this second series”, he commented.
Garcia Ibañez explained he sees his pictorial relationship with Beethoven not as a translation in images of the value of his music, but of the emotion it provokes.
“It is an emotional relationship”, he commented.
Referring to his profound interest in the composer during his university years the artists said “there was something in him which I identified with what I saw at that time, with things were happening in my life of an emotional natures, and the generic reflections I had on the human condition.
“I always found a twin soul in him, and that is why my works are an emotional approximation of his work.”
This is the first time the whole series of paintings are being shown outside the Museo Casa Ibanez in Olula del Rio. The exhibition runs until March 22.