Mark Tennant, the master who returns to Spain

Mark Tennant (Baltimore, 1950) is the master painter to whom several generations of young artists owe much of the development of their own artistic vocation. His classes and workshops at the Academy of Art at the University of San Francisco, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Louvre in Paris, which have been attended by dozens of graduates from fine arts faculties around the world, have played a major role in this. 

A major reference point for artists and collectors, he is considered one of the finest exponents of compositional techniques. He is renowned for his ability to combine academicism with modern expressiveness, the plasticity of his chiaroscuro and his economy of means, which have enabled him to give his latest creations an extraordinary plastic simplicity that is clearly neo-impressionist.

In the exhibition that has just opened in Madrid at Espacio 75, which will run until the beginning of July under the generic title ‘In Focus’, he deliberately adjusts his lens so that we can see the reality that surrounds us, reminding us that the human figure continues to be fertile ground for exploring emotion, beauty and fragility. His painting is an invitation to see beyond the obvious. 

Of the five days he has spent in the Spanish capital, he has spent three at the Prado Museum conducting a colour study of Velázquez's ‘The Coronation of the Virgin’. When he talks about the brilliant Sevillian Baroque painter, Tennant always refers to him as ‘the master’, whom he recognises as his inspiration par excellence. 

While he was working on this task in the Prado in full view of the public, many of the visitors commented on the speed of execution and the precision of his brushstrokes. When I mention this to him, he replies that ‘I have painted this brilliant work by the master (Velázquez) more than twenty times in my head’. 

He also acknowledges having been influenced by 20th-century American painting schools, especially Sergent and Henner, and he unambiguously defends the importance of learning from the great masters in order to find one's own voice. 

In the collection now on display in Madrid, with people always at the centre of the different scenes, it is easy to see his love of drawing, the echoes of the past in his respect for the classics and his connection with those new generations of artists who respect and admire him for his sensitivity in approaching and capturing the essence of contemporary life. 

Another exceptional painter, who died in Madrid, Francis Bacon, said that ‘I always wanted a technique capable of reproducing the deep reality and not the appearance of things’. Mark Tennant has proven that he has achieved this. His oil paintings, his capture of light that Sorolla would surely bless, and the movement with broad brushstrokes and imprecise faces show that personal voice of his own, rooted in the historical legacy of the great masters.