Spanish art

Spanish art has been an important contributor to Western art and Spain has produced many famous and influential artists including Velázquez, Goya and Picasso. Spanish art was particularly influenced by Italy and France during the Baroque and Neoclassical periods, but Spanish art has often had very distinctive characteristics, partly explained by the Moorish heritage in Spain (especially in Andalusia), and through the political and cultural climate in Spain during the Counter-Reformation and the subsequent eclipse of Spanish power under the Bourbon dynasty.

The prehistoric art of Spain had many important periods: it was one of the main centres of European Upper Paleolithic art and the rock art of the Spanish Levant in the subsequent periods. In the Iron Age north-western Spain was a centre for Celtic art, and Iberian sculpture has a distinct style, partly influenced by coastal Greek settlements. Spain was conquered by the Romans by 200 BC and Rome was rather smoothly replaced by the Germanic Visigoths in the 5th century AD, who represented only a small ruling class, who soon Christianized. The relatively few remains of Visigothic art and architecture show an attractive and distinct version of wider European trends, but the Muslim conquest of most of Spain in the 8th century was a massive disruption and transformation. Over the following centuries the wealthy courts of Al-Andaluz produced many works of exceptional quality, culminating in the Alhambra in Granada, right at the end of Muslim Spain.

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