'The American dream. From pop to the present' will travel from Madrid to Barcelona.
Surely at this point You will have already marveled at the geometric abstract art of Mondrian and De Stijl at the Reina Sofía, the exhibition that arrived in November to remind us of the proper names (also that of a magazine) of those who, almost a century ago, modernized the graphic arts forever (until March 1). Similarly, Kandinsky's aesthetic and expressive world may have left you speechless –As much as his strokes were often calligraphic– in the exhibition that bears his name at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (until May 23). But don't worry, this 2021 has us ready many (and varied) exhibitions that will make us leave home to find refuge in Art, so with capital letters, because, if an artistic work is not capable of comforting us, abstracting us and restoring our illusion, what is?
Mondrian and De Stijl exhibition: 'Children's bedroom, Villa Arendshoeve', by Vilmos Huszár and Pieter Jan Christoffel Klaarhamer.
THE ROADY TWENTIES
For his parallels with our own Roaring Twenties, very timely is this exhibition that will open on May 7 (until September 19) at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, an institution that lucidly and brilliantly explains the origin of progress, the avant-garde and the social changes of a century ago: “Citizens wanted to put the traumatic years behind them and invoke better times, showing a deep desire to experience a fuller life in new social circumstances, the result of change”. An assertion that could well serve as a prediction for our immediate future.
As in a sensual dance of characters with garçon-style hair and extravagant clothes, and with the sound of jazz and cinematographic images as a source of inspiration, the artistic director of the Arriaga Theater, Calixto Bieito, an expert in the opera scene, will be in charge of designing the show, which will focus on the cities of Berlin and Paris as epicenters of the utopian and exhilarating 'madness' of the 1920s.
Christian Schad, Maika, 1929. Oil on wood, 65 x 63 cm. Particular collection.
THE AMERICAN DREAM. FROM POP TO THE PRESENT
Most of them from the collection of the British Museum in London, the more than 200 works in this exhibition –which will remain at the CaixaForum Madrid until January 31– will travel to Barcelona to be exhibited in the cultural center of the "la Caixa" Foundation in Montjuïc (from March 3 to June 13). There could not be a more appropriate setting – a spectacular abandoned modernist textile factory that ended up being a warehouse and stables until it was recovered – to show the illusions and disappointments that production and (finally massive) consumption have been generating in the United States over the last 60 years, the central theme of this visual retrospective that includes the history of American engraving.
Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Willem de Kooning, Jasper Johns... they all achieved with their works what seemed impossible, and we are not referring to putting an end to abstract expressionism and its deep existentialism, but to turn images that were no longer “unique” into authentic icons of art because they could be repeated ad nauseam thanks to techniques such as screen printing.
'I love freedom', by Roy Lichtenstein, in the exhibition 'The American Dream. From pop to today'.
MYTHOLOGICAL PASSIONS
The Prado National Museum will give us long teeth during the month of February with the visit-workshop Delicias del Prado (a tour of his most gastronomic and sensory works that will end with the tasting of a dessert inspired by Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights), but it will not be until March 2 when he opens Mythological Passions (until July 4), more that an exhibition, an artistic event, being the first time – for almost four centuries – that the six poems that Titian painted for King Felipe II are together again to compete in beauty and creative freedom.
Though are not a stable coexistence group, Danae (Apsley House, London), Venus and Adonis (El Prado), Perseus and Andromeda (Wallace Collection, London), Diana and Actaeon and Diana and Callisto (National Gallery of Edinburgh and London, respectively) and El rapto de Europa ( Isabella Stewart Garden Museum, Boston) meet the maximum number allowed for meetings in Madrid.
'Diana and Actaeon'. Titian. Joint purchase by the National Gallery and the National Galleries of Scotland, with other contributions.
JOAN MIRÓ AND ADLAN
we already knew the Miró's relationship with the Catalan avant-garde group ADLAN through the Espai 13 platform of the Fundació Joan Miró, which was born to promote emerging art proposals as the artists, architects, writers and musicians of this current that emerged in Republican Barcelona, whose objective was to defend modernity and spread new art. But this year, in addition, this artistic communion between the Catalan painter and said cultural entity will be reflected and available to the general public thanks to the exhibition Joan Miró and ADLAN (from March 12), which pays homage to this group of artists and intellectuals called Amics de l'Art Nou, who found in Joan Miró a figure to lean on (and reflect on).
Joan Miro. Aidez l'Espagne, 1937. Joan Miró Foundation, Barcelona
AMERICAN ART IN THE THYSSEN COLLECTION
There will be those who are already obsessed – just like the Belgian artist did with his own self-portraits – waiting the retrospective that the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza is preparing on René Magritte, entitled The Magritte Machine (from September 14 to January 30, 2022), or those who cannot wait any longer to enjoy the classicism of Italian painting from the 14th to the 18th centuries (from October 26 to January 9, 2022), which rests regularly at the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya. I don't know about you, but I, personally, confess that this year I am very into landscapes and, if they are American, better than better: open, free, wild, wild, without limits. So we're in luck: the exhibition American Art in the Thyssen Collection (from November 22 to June 26, 2022) will take us on a tour of 19th-century landscaping in a transversal and thematic way, instead of chronologically. Because, who are we to put doors on the field?