Louis Léo HOURDILLE
Arco de Zocodover
1950s

About the Item

Mid Century oil on canvas view of the Moorish arch in the Plaza de Zocodover in Toledo, Spain by Louis Léo Hourdille. The painting is signed and titled to the back of the canvas. Hourdille has managed to capture all the charm of this iconic view, he has captured the hot Spanish sun on the canvas. The feeling of the shade of the arch against the bright blue of the sky, the sun illuminating the fronts of the buildings and the edge of the arch itself. A horse being saddled up in the foreground, in the distance a couple in conversation. He has used an impasto technique, wonderful texture and a feeling of depth to the composition. A very atmospheric painting. The Plaza de Zocodover is a square of the city of Toledo in the autonomous community of Castile-La Mancha, Spain. It was the nerve center of the city during most of its history, acting as its main square. A part of it was designed by Juan de Herrera during the reign of Philip II. Here horses, donkeys, foals, mares, mules and other beasts were sold, when the city of Toledo was a Spanish-Muslim city. The origin of the name Zocodover comes from the Arabic language sūq ad-dawābb, which means "market of burden beasts". This place was also the place where bullfighting and the cucañas were organized in the celebrations of the locality. It has been, therefore, the nerve centre of the social life of the city since medieval times. . It is when the old square was destroyed by a fire on October 29, 1589 that the decision was taken to build a new one. In 1854 an ambitious project was drawn up by the hand of the technician Santiago Martín Ruiz to reorganize the plaza de Zocodover, transforming it into a rectangular portico square. Here the most important market of the city took place. It has been established as a weekly market for centuries. Today it occurs on Tuesdays in the vicinity of Paseo de Merchán or de la Vega. Louis Léo Hourdille enjoyed considerable artistic success in his lifetime, much of his work inspired by his childhood spent in Tolede where his father was working. He continued to return throughout his life and was inspired by the work of the master El Greco as well as the things and people he saw there. Born in 1910, Louis Léo Hourdille was primarily influenced by the 1920s. The 1920s and 1930s saw continued development and evolution of the key innovations of the first years of the twentieth century. To have this time as the formative period for an artist was to be surrounded by inspiring practitioners of the pictorial arts. It was also a time of recovery and introspection after the horrors of the First World War, which saw important shifts in the political world. Marxism was a predominant political ideology which was also enormously influential among artists and their communities. Key artistic developments included a kind of expressive characteristic which was exemplified by Brancusi, Modigliani and Soutine in Paris. Surrealism developed throughout the 1920s and 1930s, with a focus on the human unconscious - a vital idea of Freudian theory. Key Surrealist artists include Salvador Dali, Giorgio de Chirico, Andre Breton, Rene Magritte and Paul Delvaux. Due to its cultural importance, much of this ideology spread across the globe.

Creator:

Louis Léo HOURDILLE (1910 - 2003, French)

Creation Year:

1950s

Dimensions:

Height: 24.41 in (62 cm)Width: 21.26 in (54 cm)Depth: 1.19 in (3 cm)

Medium:

Canvas,Oil

Movement & Style:

Impressionist

Period:

Mid-20th Century