Black Paintings

Website(s) : http://www.laventus4tet.com/

Biography

Piet Swerts (b. 1960). Belgian composer, conductor and pianist of international acclaim; his large catalogue includes stage, orchestral, chamber, choral, vocal, and piano works.

Formed in the fall of 2012 in Hartford, Connecticut, La’Ventus Quartet has risen to national acclaim winning Third Place in the American Prize in Chamber Music Performance Competition. La’Ventus is dedicated to combining classical, contemporary, standard, and new music to create a unique sound and a fresh perspective with the versatility and flexibility inherent in a saxophone quartet. They have been featured at the Women Composers Festival of Hartford, International Saxophone Symposium, North American Saxophone Alliance Competition and Conferences, and Institute for New Music at Northwestern University.

More information

Black Paintings (Spanish: Pinturas negras) is the name given to a group of fourteen paintings by Francisco Goya from the later years of his life, likely between 1819 and 1823. Francisco Goya (1746–1828) is regarded as the most important Spanish artist of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Over the course of his long career, Goya moved from jolly and lighthearted to deeply pessimistic and searching in his paintings, drawings, etchings, and frescoes. In 1819, at the age of 72, Goya moved into a two-story house outside Madrid that was called Quinta del Sordo (Deaf Man’s Villa). Although the house had been named after the previous owner, who was deaf, Goya too was nearly deaf at the time as a result of an illness he had suffered when he was 46. The paintings originally were painted as murals on the walls of the house, being transferred onto canvas in 1874. They portrayed intense, haunting themes, reflective of both his fear of insanity and his bleak outlook on humanity. As dark and ominous as they are, the Black Paintings are the happy resolution of a painter who reached the highest peak and no longer had to compromise himself. The Black Paintings are the purest form of art as self-expression and arose solely from the artist’s mind. Currently they are held in the Museo del Prado in Madrid.

With the goal of collaborating with other great musicians at the highest level and advancing their canon of repertoire. In 2014 La’Ventus Quartet commissioned world-renown Belgian composer, staunch force in the saxophone world, and friend, Piet Swerts for an original saxophone quartet to premiere at the 2015 XVII World Saxophone Congress in Strasbourg, France. Mr. Swerts later had the inspiration for this premiere from his recent visit to the Prado Museum in Madrid in late Spring 2014. Mr. Swerts was especially drawn to one of the paintings, El Gran Cabrón. He was fascinated by the exuberant details and suggested atmosphere of the work. The image of the devil inspired him to find a theme with the tritone being a dominant force.