A visitor looks at the painting "Veronica" in the exhibition "El Greco. Toledo 1900" which has been inaugurated at the Paraninfo of the University of Zaragoza. EFE / Javier Cebollada

ZARAGOZA.- The exhibition "El Greco. Toledo 1900" opens today in Zaragoza joining the International exhibition “Water and Sustainable Development” which is also being shown at the city in Aragon, Spain.

The Caja Castilla-La Mancha (CCM), who has organized the show along with the Ministry of Culture has pointed out that alter having visited Seville and Valencia, the exhibition will remain in the recently renovated Paraninfo of the University of Zaragoza until November 30.

The exhibition, which was developed around the recovery of the painting of El Greco and the city of Toledo, around 1900, gathers 27 canvases made by El Greco and his workshop, which have hung in the city of Toledo in different public and private collections.

Among the canvases, a group of portraits of the Covarrubias brothers stand out, sons of the architect who designed the Cathedral in Toledo, and Saint Peter in Tears.

Viewers can also see a magnificent example of the book "Las Obras completas de Jenofonte", as well as a portrait of El Greco made by Joaquín Sorolla in 1910.

A photographic selection from the Moreno Archives, at the Instituto del Patrimonio Histórico Español (IPHE), completes the exhibition. The photographs were taken by Mariano Moreno at the beginning of the 20th century.

El Greco was born in Crete, which was at that time part of the Republic of Venice, and the centre of Post-Byzantine art. He trained and became a master within that tradition before travelling at age 26 to Venice, as other Greek artists had done. In 1570 he moved to Rome, where he opened a workshop and executed a series of works. During his stay in Italy, El Greco enriched his style with elements of Mannerism and of the Venetian Renaissance. In 1577 he moved to Toledo, Spain, where he lived and worked until his death. In Toledo, El Greco received several major commissions and produced his best known paintings.

El Greco's dramatic and expressionistic style was met with puzzlement by his contemporaries but found appreciation in the 20th century. El Greco is regarded as a precursor of both Expressionism and Cubism, while his personality and works were a source of inspiration for poets and writers such as Rainer Maria Rilke and Nikos Kazantzakis. El Greco has been characterized by modern scholars as an artist so individual that he belongs to no conventional school. He is best known for tortuously elongated figures and often fantastic or phantasmagorical pigmentation, marrying Byzantine traditions with those of Western painting.