The exhibition’s eight sections reveal the complexity and range of El Greco’s influence, starting with the enormous interest that he aroused among the most innovative French painters such as Manet and Cézanne and among leading Spanish painters such as Rusiñol and Zuloaga, among others. The exhibition also analyses the artist’s ongoing influence on Pablo Picasso, the key figure in the creation of the numerous trends that revolutionised the visual arts in the 20th century. Also on display are works by other artists associated with Cubism who evolved towards other approaches, including André Derain, Robert Delaunay, Diego Rivera and Amedeo Modigliani.

The inclusion of books on El Greco that helped to extend knowledge of his work by authors such as Manuel Bartolomé Cossío, August Mayer, Julius Meier-Graefe and Maurice Barrés will allow visitors to appreciate how the rediscovery of El Greco and his oeuvre inspired modern painters.

Expressionists such as Beckmann, Macke and Kokoschka, Jewish artists of the School of Paris such as Soutine and Chagall and the poetic Surrealism of Masson and Domínguez are all represented in the exhibition through works that clearly reveal El Greco’s influence.

Another issue analysed in El Greco and Modern Painting is the artist’s particular importance for the development of modern painting in South America and the USA, where the most expressive facets of his work fascinated the Mexican artist José Clemente Orozco and the Americans Benton and Pollock.

Finally, the exhibition explores the role of El Greco in the angst-ridden, expressive figuration of the post-war era, as evident in the work of Alberto Giacometti, Francis Bacon and Antonio Saura, some of whom executed specific homages to the artist.