Context brings the brightest minds to your living room with perspective-shifting online lectures.
Introduction to Valencia: Multicultural History, Modern Flair with Mark Planellas Witzsch
No events are scheduled at this time. Want to be notified when it’s back? Click the blue button to the right and we’ll notify you.
Mark Planellas Witzsch is active in several areas in the cultural field and taught philosophy of art and avant-gardes of the twentieth century at university, focusing on universally well-known Catalan artists such as Salvador Dalí and Joan Miró. Catalonia being a part of Spain that has historically defended democracy and the ideals of the republic, the vast majority of its artists were committed to those Civil values and reflected it in their art. This led Mark Planellas to dive into some related topics, such as propaganda in the twentieth century, thus publishing books on the subject, such as “Jaume Miravitlles. El somriure de Catalunya”, which explains the history of the first modern propaganda ministry ever created, in the context of the Spanish Civil War.
This conversation is suitable for all ages.
90 minutes, including a 30 minute Q&A.
I thoroughly enjoyed this presentation. It was amazingly informative but easy to follow and digest, and the presenter is excellent. Highly recommended for history and points of interest.
Excellently presented, extensively researched, Planellas presents a description of the city with lots of pictures and maps. Who knew that aside from oranges Valencia has a deep agricultural legacy of saffron and rice? I was expecting a bit more about the city's role during Spanish Civil War, but only because I had attended Planellas's fine seminar on the subject.
Mark Planellas Witzsch provided a detailed introduction to Valencia, its history and sites, and many bits of cultural context about Spain's third city. Much has changed there since Generalissimo Franco died in 1975 and there is much to see there, some day in the future. His talk gave us the places to start with, when we go.
I would give it an A+++. Mark is an excellent and vibrant speaker, his English is flawless and I felt like I really knew Valencia - it's history and culture- by the end of the talk. Would love to go visit. The visuals were outstanding.
I think Mark did an excellent presentation tracing the history of Valencia from ancients until the present. Lots of old and new illustrations including photographs. The one thing I think would add to the program would be examples of local people and how they live today — market stalls and vendors, shops and shopkeepers, workers, children and elderly people making paella or other dishes, street art (a lot of which is terrific!), etc.