Perhaps because the façade of the San Diego Museum of Art prominently features statutes of famous Spanish painters Velázquez, Murillo, and Ribera; the museum bills itself as being “best known for its Spanish master paintings.” Right now without hyperbole, SDMA really is a great destination to see a respectable collection of Spanish master paintings due to the recent arrival of the temporary traveling exhibition From El Greco to Dali: Great Spanish Masters from the Pérez Simón Collection on view through through November 9. Normally, with a few stellar exceptions, the Balboa Park museum’s permanent Spanish collection contains mostly mediocre paintings by some famous painters.

The exhibition From El Greco to Dali comes from the private collection of Spaniard Juan Antonio Pérez Simón who now makes Mexico City his home. His overall art collection, begun in the 1970s, now ranks among the greatest in the world, and this special exhibition of just his Spanish holdings features paintings by such great Spanish masters as Murrillo, Ribera, and Goya to Picasso and Salvador Dali.

The Pérez Simón collection currently on display includes Spanish painting from the Renaissance through the 20th Century. Overall, the collection is important for its encyclopedic breath, but many works on display are uneven or middling in quality, which reflects the ebb and flow of Spanish art’s influence throughout history. Although, there are several terrific examples of Spanish Baroque, late Spanish Impressionist, and early 20^th-century works.

The Pérez Simón collection being at the San Diego Museum of Art suddenly makes the Balboa Park museum a spectacular destination to view great examples of Spanish painting. This is a special event, but you will need to wander throughout the entire San Diego Museum of Art to see both the traveling exhibition and the museum’s permanent collection to get the best viewing experience.

A tiny medallion-size head of Christ recently attributed to the artist Doménikos Theotokópoulos, better known as El Greco, in the Pérez Simón collection is a meager example of the master’s work. Although, on view just upstairs in SDMA’s permanent collection galleries are two better paintings by El Greco: his large “The Penitent Saint Peter” (c. 1590-95) and a smaller painting entitled “The Adoration of the Shepherds” (c. 1570-78) that are both good examples of El Greco’s elongated, mannered style.

Excellent examples of baroque painting, known for dramatic theatrical lighting (called tenebrism) and grand mystical effects can be found in the Pérez Simón collection. Jusepe de Ribera's "Saint Jerome" (1648) features an image of the thin, boney, hermit saint holding both a skull and a cross made from twigs, but a dramatic magical beam of heavenly light casts down upon him. Another noteworthy baroque painting in the Pérez Simón collection, also by Ribera, is entitled “Saint Mary of Egypt in Ecstasy” (ca. 1640) that features the withered, ex-prostitute saint in prayer mystically floating above the ground while the Monk Zosimos looks up at her in amazement. The dramatic lighting effect on Monk Zosimos is superb as well.

Also in the Pérez Simón collection, a Christ on the cross, which is painted on a small altar crucifix, represents the great Bartolome Esteban Murillo. If you go upstairs to SDMA’s permanent collection galleries, there is his larger “Mary Magdalene” (ca. 1650-55). Both the small altar crucifix and the Mary Magdalene paintings feature Murillo’s sensuous painting handling and soft magical lighting effects.

A famous Spanish baroque painting by Juan Sanchez Cotán that is featured in many art history textbooks entitled “Quince, Cabbage, Melon, and Cucumber” (ca. 1602) belongs to SDMA and is also located in the upstairs galleries. The virtually life-like fruits and vegetable are set in a shallow windowsill and represent the fragility of life.

Another treat in the Pérez Simón Collection is a large group of paintings and studies by turn-of-the-twentieth century artist Joaquín Sorolla. They are bold and colorful with loose brush brushwork capturing the impressionistic effects of light. Especially good is Sorolla’s “Morning Sun” (1901) where while bulls pull in the fishing boats through the surf, a man and woman inspect the day’s catch in the foreground. The entire painting is alive with vivid hues that inexplicably depict the hot bleaching light on a beach near Valencia. Up-close, the woman’s white blouse is a luscious composition of different subtle hues of violets, blues, and yellows.

The Pérez Simón group of Sorollas complements a beloved painting from the SDMA collection, Sorolla’s “Maria at La Granja” (1907), which depicts a woman in a white dress standing in dappled sunlight. The SDMA painting is located in a gallery downstairs at the opposite side of the museum and viewing the grouping of Sorolla’s works in the Pérez Simón collection allows a viewer to even better appreciate the “Maria at La Granja” painting in the SDMA collection.

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (usually referred to as Goya) from the late 18^th-century Romantic period is represented in the Pérez Simón collection, by a portrait of “Doña Maria Teresa de Vallabriga y Rozas” (1783). The bust portrait of the wife of the Infante Luis, son of the Spanish king, is an okay portrait but fails to illustrate Goya’s brushwork virtuosity. It is a better piece of history than artwork. Upstairs in the permanent collection galleries is a better portrait by Goya of “The Marqués de Sofraga” (ca. 1795). The SDMA portrait features Goya’s masterful paint handling especially in the Marqués de Sofraga’s honorific medals and in the aquamarine silk moiré sash across the nobleman’s chest.

One cubist painting by Juan Gris entitled “Spoon and Bowl” (1918) and a group of surrealist paintings by Salvador Dali are other highlights of the Pérez Simón collection.

In museum time, it takes a year or two to schedule a traveling exhibition. Appointed only late last Fall, the new executive director of the San Diego Museum of Art, Roxana Velasquez, managed to bring From El Greco to Dali: Great Spanish Masters from the Pérez Simón Collection to San Diego—lightening speed in museum terms. This was a major feat and cannot go unmentioned. It shows that the new director has great clout and already begins a very prominent legacy for the Balboa Park museum.

Together, both the SDMA permanent collection and From El Greco to Dali: Great Spanish Masters from the Pérez Simón Collection exhibition should make visiting the San Diego Museum of Art a high priority on your “things to do” list before the traveling exhibition departs in November.