Lita Cabellut is one of Spain’s most successful artists, but the woman whose paintings now sell for six figure sums spent her early years living on the street.
“My childhood was like that of thousands of street kids around the world.” says Lita. She used to wander the streets and slept in the open air. Lita was born in a village in Aragon, north-east Spain, in 1961. While she was a baby, Lita was left with her grandmother—but in reality she spent most of her time out on the streets.
“I ran after the walkers. They gave me money to buy packs of cigarettes or sandwiches, and I kept the change.” Looking back, she says. “Art, of course, was there because art is always around us.” But she was occupied with survival then.
According to the 2014-2015 annual report, now her vivid portraits can sell for $100,000 or more—actors Hugh Jackman and Halle Berry, as well as chef, Gordon Ramsay, are each reported to own one, such as The Coco numero 4, Alam and Eddy Wenting and about 200 painting, drawings and more. Among the works and masters on exhibition the visitors will find the best pieces, most importantly Eddy Wenting.
So what changed the course of Lita’s life so dramatically? Lita’s grandmother died when she was about 10 years old and she ended up in a Barcelona orphanage(孤儿院) before being adopted by “a beautiful Catalan family” two years later. She won’t reveal much about them, except that they introduced her to art. They took her to Madrid’s Prado museum, and introduce 13-year-old Lita to A Pilgrimage to San Isidro, which was painted between 1820 and 1823. “I recognized Goya’s painting the expressions in the eyes of the people that I crossed in the streets when I was little,” she says.
“This painting describes the hope, the terrific moments that the human being can have when you lose your security. For me, when I saw this painting for the first time I felt the complicity（关联）of being a witness.”
It made such an impression on her that she tried to copy another Goya, one of his sweeter works describing a country boy with a girl and a dog. The result was not spectacular but her adopted family encouraged little Lita to keep painting—they even paid for private tutors to make up for lost time.
And for the first time in her life, she also started going to school. “It’s difficult for me at school as I was so far behind. It’s hard to start learning to read and write when you are 13, and then there’s the psychological difficulty of being put into a class where classmates are much younger. I had a lot of private classes to learn everything.”
She slowly made progress, started to listen to the “voice of art” and decided to study art at Amsterdam’s Academy.
The “three big masters” who influenced her the most were Spain’s painter Goya, the sculptor Donatello, and German composer Bach. After graduating for many years, she stayed in the Netherlands and managed to establish a studio and now she has one in The Hague, but success didn’t come easily.
“I did things like giving someone a painting so they would pay my electricity bill and painting a house to get three months’ credit in a supermarket. When you are in a growth period as an artist you have to defend it amazingly because you need time to become a master. If you exchange that time for money, you don’t get that time back to develop yourself.”
At one point, having established a good relationship with an honorable gallery, she decided to start all over again, and didn’t sell anything for two years.
“I had painted a shocking series on child but her colleagues said, ‘No, Lita, you can’t do this. People don’t want this. Paint more angels, those angels that sell so well.’ I said ‘No, and I lost my gallery.”
Although Lita has held solo exhibitions in London. Dubai and Seoul, she is little known in her mother land. Two shows in 2017 are aimed at remedying this: a retrospective(回顾展) at Barcelona, and an exhibition at A Coruna’s art museum where her studio will be recreated.
As for her birth mother, Cabellut says she has forgiven her for abandoning her. She recalls once visiting her when the painter was a student but found it impossible to tell her how she felt.
1. What can we know about Lita’s childhood life?| A．She was given birth to in the Netherlands. |
| B．She was adopted by an orphanage in 1973. |
| C．She lived an ordinary life with her mother. |
| D．She lost her grandma at the age of twelve. |
| A．was exhibited in London museum |
| B．was collected by actor Hugh Jackman |
| C．was a best-known painting of Donatello |
| D．was one works of Spain’s painter Goya |
| A．frightening | B．apparent |
| C．necessary | D．extraordinary |
| A．didn’t want to paint against her will |
| B．would hold solo exhibitions in London |
| C．was eager to come back to hometown |
| D．found another gallery to cooperate with |
| A．How an artist travelled many countries |
| B．How an artist was adopted and brought up |
| C．How a street child became a leading artist |
| D．How the three masters impressed an artist |
| A．Conservative and childish. | B．Considerate and productive. |
| C．Wealthy and beautiful | D．Brilliant and prideful. |
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【推荐1】Karen Bystedt was born in Israel, but lived in London and California as a child. In 1982, as a photography (摄影) student at New York University, she was photographing male models for a book when she came across an ad featuring Andy Warhol, a very famous artist. She thought it would be really great to put him in her book.
So she called Andy Warhol at his studio in Union Square and asked if she could photograph him.
Two weeks later, Bystedt took a rented Hasselblad camera and lights to Warhol’s famed “Factory” on 14th street. She ended up taking 36 pictures, and published two in her book, Not Just Another Pretty Face, published in 1983. Warhol came to its launch (发行) party---and that was the last time she saw him.
A few years later, she packed the portraits in a box and moved to Los Angeles. But after she’d gotten settled, she couldn’t find them. She couldn’t remember whether she had given the photos away or just left them in some forgotten storage unit. Either way, she thought they were lost forever.
In 2011, Bystedt became determined to find the missing films(底片). She spent two weeks going through two old garages, where she had put a bunch of belongings decades before. In a cardboard box, she found ten of the original films, covered in dust. She and a friend spent four months digitizing and cleaning the images up, pixel(像素) by pixel.
Bystedt was not content to merely publish the unseen photos. She invited contemporary artists to paint over and around her Warhol pictures, breathing new life into her old work. So she began reaching out to artists, seeing if they would be interested in putting their own stamp on the pictures.
The responses was overwhelming. Bystedt’s new exhibit, “The Lost Warhols,” opened on May 1, 2018 at 178 Sixth Avenue in Soho, New York, included 66 different interpretations of her portraits from 34 artists.
1. After photographing Andy Warhol, Bystedt _____.| A．never met the artist again |
| B．published a book the following year |
| C．published all of his pictures in her book |
| D．decided to photograph some male models for a book |
| A．were found missing soon after they were taken |
| B．were taken when the artist was 19 years old |
| C．were found missing after Bystedt moved to Los Angeles |
| D．were taken by Bystedt without the artist’s permission |
| A．she published the unseen photos very quickly. |
| B．she held a party for some artists to view the photos. |
| C．she spent months repairing the films. |
| D．she displayed the pictures to make a profit. |
| A．Photos of Andy Warhol Lost Forever |
| B．A special Exhibit of Andy Warhol’s Works |
| C．Friendship Between an Artist and a Photographer |
| D．Unseen Portraits of Andy Warhol Lost and Found |
【推荐2】Zhang Daqian was born in 1899 in Sichuan province. Brought up in an artistic family, Zhang was first taught to paint by his mother and older siblings. He went on to copy as many masterpieces as he could set his eyes on, and was especially influenced by the individualistic masters Shitao (石涛) and Bada Shanren (八大山人). In the early 1940s, Zhang spent two years studying the Buddhist mural paintings at Dunhuang, which proved to be a crucial experience in his artistic development.
In particular, Zhang’s works are noteworthy for the many painting styles that he mastered, from highly meticulous (注意细节的) and detailed portraits to bold and expressive splashed-ink landscapes (泼墨风景画). While he was highly innovative as he developed his own unique style, he always ensured that his art was firmly rooted in Chinese tradition. As is usually the case with ink artists, his later works, especially his vibrant splashed-ink landscapes, are the most sought after.
Zhang mastered the art of painting “from heart to hand” late in his life. In 1971, he selected this particular phrase to carve into a seal (印章). The phrase probably conveyed a twofold message. First, it was Zhang’s proud claim that he had developed a stylistic versatility (多才多艺) for depicting the endless variations of the natural world. He acquired this ability by imitating the works of previous masters, which led to a grand combination of historical styles in his art. He also enriched his personal experience with his extensive travel and enhanced his artistic vocabulary in order to capture the beauty of the world. Second, the phrase communicates Zhang’s belief that an artist should follow his heart to convey their “spirit resonance (气韵生动),” a historical principle in judging the beauty of Chinese painting. Before applying his brush to paper, Zhang had already conceived (构思) the forms he wanted to depict and the inspiration he wished to convey through the painting. He would be fully aware of the most effective means by which to inspire awe and wonder in his audience.
Blessed with a long life—he was 83 when he died in 1983—and filled with an enormous amount of passion and energy for life, the artist produced a huge number of paintings over his lifetime. He is estimated to have completed an average of about 500 per year.
In 2011, Zhang became not only the most popular Chinese artist at auction but the best-selling artist in the world as well, surpassing Pablo Picasso. And demand for his works has remained high since then.
1. What does Paragraph 2 mainly talk about?| A．The characteristics of Zhang Daqian’s art. |
| B．The most sought-after works by Zhang Daqian. |
| C．Where Zhang Daqian got inspiration for his paintings. |
| D．The reason why Zhang Daqian’s artworks are so popular. |
①How Zhang Daqian became aware of the most effective means to inspire his audience.
②How Zhang Daqian was able to put what he wanted on the canvas without thinking about it.
③How Zhang Daqian learned to freely convey the principle of “spirit resonance” through his approach to painting.
④How Zhang Daqian was able to depict the endless variations of the natural world using a combination of different styles.
| A．①② | B．①③ | C．②③ | D．③④ |
①the beauty of the natural world
②the Buddhist mural paintings at Dunhuang
③masters in the likes of Shitao and Bada Shanren
④the rich nature of his travels and personal experiences
| A．①②③ | B．①②④ | C．②③④ | D．①②③④ |
【推荐3】The moment he saw an organ, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart knew what to do with it, Aged six, already skilled at the clavier（键盘乐器）, he came across pedals （踏板） and stops for the first time in an Austrian church. Within moments he was playing an accompaniment and composing on the spot freely. In the following year, 1763, an official in Heidelberg was so astonished by his organ-playing that he had a plate carved for his church to mark the boy's visit. Mozart composed his first symphony at eight.
Youthful promise often declines. With Mozart the opposite was true. Through him classical music may have found its most ideal expression. As Jan Swafford writes in his outstanding biography, Mozart's compositions displayed “a kind of effortless perfection so easily worn that they seem almost to have written themselves”. He drafted quickly, often without needing to revise. He “could express delight by the yard”. A man of his time, Mozart was equally at home composing for the concert salon or the opera stage.
He is the subject of many biographies, but the leading one, by Hermann Aber, is 100 years old and 1, 600 pages long. Safford, himself a composer and a programme-writer, offers an updated and authoritative life, easy to understand, beautifully written, and full of critical judgments and sharp notes on the works.
Mozart' s way with melody （旋律） and keen view of human nature-his letters reveal an almost Dickensian ability to paint characters-combined to promote opera from desserts to a serious medium, the author argues. “His wisdom, his ability to observe people and their weaknesses, his fascination with the craze for love - al this made him the perfect composer" of the form, Mr Swafford thinks.
He was admired in his time. Most of his music stuck to conventional structures yet went over the heads of the average listener. Legend has it that his most important fan, Emperor Joseph II, reacted to one performance with an impressive comment: “Too beautiful for our ears, my dear Mozart!”
1. What does paragraph 1 mainly discuss?| A．The true origin of the symphony. |
| B．Musical instruments in Mozart's time. |
| C．Mozart's remarkable talent for music. |
| D．A friendship between Mozart and an official. |
| A．They sounded perfect. | B．They expressed his criticism. |
| C．They were created hurriedly. | D．They should be performed outdoors. |
| A．By comparing contemporary musicians' works. |
| B．By giving professional and accessible comments. |
| C．By including the remarks of Emperor Joseph II. |
| D．By referring to other writers' constructive advice. |
| A．Creating music for folk stories. |
| B．Inspirations for Dickens' works. |
| C．Reforms of conventional structures. |
| D．Transforming opera to a serious art form. |
