Voces del Prado

The Genius of the Great Masters

María Teresa Dávila Álvarez, Restorer, 1982-2013

It’s a question of having respect for an artist who is endowed with something special, something that not everyone else has. He is such a unique creator that, through a series of resources and materials as simple as wood, canvas, plaster or pigments - which is to say, a series of eminently simple materials – he is able to achieve something truly great; a painting of the kind that immediately attracts your attention when you walk through a hall and makes you turn round. The spirit and soul of painting has been built in this manner. These paintings have a soul and a life and they say many things, because centuries of history have passed. Creators such as this are made up of people of all kinds, ranging from virtual illiterates to highly cultivated individuals. And what they have created continues to attract attention and continues to create an enterprise, as it were: an enterprise because there are many of us who are working around them, and there are many people who live off their art and live precisely for it.