A cherished erotic play by Federico Garcia Lorca, illustrated by a major Spanish artist. Painting, poetry, and music come together in Zobel Reads Lorca, as Fernando Zobel, a Harvard student who would become one of Spain's most famous painters, translates and illustrates Federico Garcia Lorca's haunting play about the wounds of love. The premiere of Amor de Don Perlimplin con Belisa en su jardin, an "erotic allelujia" which Lorca once called his most cherished play, was shut down in 1928 by Spanish government censors who confiscated the manuscript and locked it away in the pornography section of a state archive. Lorca rewrote the work in New York, and an amateur theater group brought it to the Spanish stage a few years later. Since his death, the play has also been transformed into ballet and opera. Zobel Reads Lorca presents Zobel's previously unpublished translation and features contextual essays from several scholars. Art historian Felipe Pereda studies Lorca in the context of Zobel's development as a painter, Luis Fernandez Cifuentes describes the precarious and much-debated state of the humanities in Zobel's Harvard and throughout the United States in the 1940s, and Christopher Maurer delves into musical and visual aspects of the play's American productions.

A visually stunning examination of El Greco's work that considers the artist's constant reinvention and professional drive Renowned for a singular artistic vision, Domenikos Theotokopoulos, known as El Greco (1541-1614), developed his distinctive painting style as he assiduously pursued professional success. This fresh and engaging survey of El Greco's work explores varied aspects of the artist's career-his aesthetic education in Italy, the mixed reception of his mature works in Spain, his uncompromising approach to business, and the baroque logistics of his Toledo workshop-and reveals the depth of El Greco's astounding ambition. The impressive volume focuses in particular on his 1577-79 altarpiece paintings for the Church of Santo Domingo el Antiguo in Toledo-among them the magnificent Assumption of the Virgin-which heralded the artist's arrival in Spain after productive periods of formation and re-formation in Crete, Venice, and Rome. Lavishly illustrated and clothbound with gilded edges, this publication features reproductions and scholarly discussions of more than 60 works ranging from large-scale canvases to intimate panels, with essays that elucidate the motives and meanings behind the artist's constantly changing and inventive approach. Distributed for the Art Institute of Chicago Exhibition Schedule: Reunion des musees nationaux-Grand Palais, Paris (October 14, 2019-February 10, 2020) The Art Institute of Chicago (Spring-Fall 2020)