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The Illusion of the American Frontier
Now to February 7, 2016
For the first time in Spain, the exhibition The Illusion of the American Frontier will follow the footsteps of the 19th-century artists who first explored the American West in order to depict its landscapes and the life of its indigenous peoples. These artists gave visual form to the myth of a wild, dangerous but still virgin territory of astonishing natural grandeur.
Opening with a section on the Spanish explorers who established the first contacts with the land and tribes to the west of the Mississippi, the exhibition will follow the fascinating artistic adventures of Karl Bodmer, George Catlin and Edward Curtis, who documented, customs, rituals and appearances with a mixture of precision and ethnographic licence and of landscape painters such as Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Hill who approached their depictions of the “promised land” with dramatic intent.
The exhibition’s curator, artist Miguel Ángel Blanco, will present a group of Book-boxes from his Library of the Forest, made with materials from the American West.
Also on Special Exhibit:
Picasso and Cubism in the ABANCA Art Collection
Now to December 13, 2015
From 16 October the Museum is showing a selection of twelve works from the ABANCA collection. Entitled Picasso and Cubism, the exhibition brings together a group of five works by the Malaga-born master along with another three by the core members of the cubist movement: Braque, Juan Gris and Léger. Two paintings by Metzinger and María Blanchard, who also belonged to the French movement, a canvas by Manuel Ángeles Ortiz and a sculpture by Julio González complete the selection.
The exhibition spans the period from 1895 to 1963, beginning with a popular scene and a caricature painted by a very young Picasso in 1895 and a drawing executed in 1901 in Paris, where he had travelled that year to show his work at the Galerie Vollard. It continues with a selection of cubist works from the 1910s to the 1930s, among them María Blanchard’s Cubist Composition with Bottles (c.1918), Picasso’s Packet of Tobacco and Glass (1922), Juan Gris’s Black Grape (1923) and Braque’s Glass and Grapes (1930), ending with a canvas from the series ‘The painter and his model’ (1963–65) in which Picasso reflects on the creative process in itself.
Stemming from interest in preserving and disseminating knowledge of works by Galician artists, the ABANCA art collection gradually grew as Spanish and international pieces were purchased. As a result, it currently consists of 1,348 works by 239 artists including renowned figures such as Picasso, Braque, Léger, Miró, Dalí, Tàpies, Chillida and Barceló, among others.
Sculptural Group by Francisco Salzillo
From 20 October 2015 to 24 January 2016
For three months, the Museum will be displaying a sculptural group executed in the second half of the 18th century by the Murcia-born artist Francisco Salzillo. Loaned from the Conjunto Monumental de San Juan de Dios in Murcia, it comprises two wooden sculptures: a monstrance and a pair of angels. Salzillo (1707-1783) trained in the studio of his father, the Neapolitan sculptor Nicolás Salzillo, taking over his workshop on his death. An artist whose abilities were officially recognised in 1755 when he was appointed sculptor to the city of Murcia, Francisco Salzillo produced both single figures and processional images, such as those for the Confraternity of Nuestro Padre Jesús.
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