Once the Picasso cyclone has been overcome, which fifty years after his death captured all the attention of the art world in 2023, the year that begins does not have a clear favorite, but we will hear a lot about Tàpies and Chillida, who celebrate their centenaries with multiple exhibitions, but also of Matisse, who will visit his admired Miró in Barcelona, ??of the ceramicist Miquel Barceló who will mold La Pedrera out of clay or of Chagall seen in the light of the historical events that he witnessed. The vilified Yoko Ono will once again claim her place as the enormous artist she is at the Tate in London, a miracle city that will facilitate a meeting that seemed impossible (Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael), while Paris will celebrate the first minute of Impressionism and the one hundred years of surrealism. Here are some of the most notable quotes.
Antoni Tàpies and Eduardo Chillida were born just one month apart. They met when they were 35 years old at the 1958 Venice Biennale, in which they both participated, and although they followed different paths, they shared a relationship of friendship, a love of books, a taste for philosophy and poetry, a willingness to transcend the matter or interest in Eastern spirituality. Both would have turned 100 these days and there is nothing better to honor them than through their works. Among the scheduled exhibitions, the major retrospective of Tàpies stands out, which, under the gaze of Manuel Borja-Villel, can be seen at the Reina Sofía Museum (from March 7 to May 5) and will then travel to the artist’s foundation in Barcelona ( from July 17 to January 12, 2025). Chillida, the sculptor who created places, can be found in different cities around the world, from Santiago de Chile to San Diego, although the epicenter of the celebration will be in the Basque Country, where he laid down his roots, with exhibitions in Chillida Leku, San Telmo in San Sebastián, the Bellas Artes in Bilbao, the Artium in Vitoria or the Cristóbal Balenciaga Museum in Guetaria.
Miquel Barceló (Felanitx, Mallorca, 1957) began working with ceramics in Mali during a trip in 1994 in which the wind prevented him from painting because it covered the works with dust. It was then that he began to work with clay, helped by the women of the village, who taught him the technique of sun-dried clay. Since then, ceramics occupy a good part of his artistic production in the wood-fired oven workshop he has in Mallorca. We are all Greeks, in La Pedrera, will tour from March 8 to June 30 three decades of Barceló ceramics, from those first African works to his most recent works.
One of the best – and most surprising and impressive – exhibitions that could be seen at the Prado throughout 2023, The Lost Mirror, arrives in February at the MNAC, co-producer of the exhibition. A history lesson, in this case the history of images, which teaches how over three centuries art was put at the service of the Inquisition to reinforce Christian identity and demonize the Jews (from 23/II to 26/ V).
Without leaving the National Museum, but moving forward a couple of months on the calendar, it will be time to discover one of those artists whom history has insisted on erasing, Suzanne Valadon (1865-1938), who was a model for Renoir. and Toulouse-Lautrec, friend of Degas, trapeze artist and mother of a son, Maurice, also an artist, to whom Miquel Utrillo gave his surname. She first picked up the brush when she was 44 years old and became a famous painter with million-dollar prices. It comes from the Center Pompidou-Metz and the Nantes Art Museum. (From 4/19 to 9/1)
“Matisse always moves me,” Joan Miró exclaimed in 1980 when touring the exhibition dedicated to him that year by the Juan March Foundation in Madrid. And much earlier, in an exchange of confidences with Louis Aragon, the French artist confessed to him: “Miró… yes, Miró… because, regardless of what he represents on a canvas…, if at a given point there is When a red spot is placed, you can be sure that it was there, and nowhere else, where it was meant to be… Remove it, and the painting falls.” The fruit of this mutual admiration is MiróMatisse: beyond the images, the exhibition at the Fundació Miró (from 10/17 to 2/23/2025) that will allow these two titans of 20th century art to look each other in the eyes again.
One of the most groundbreaking projects that promises to stir the calm waters of the Barcelona scene is Carmen by the filmmaker and performance artist Wu Tsang (Worcester, Massachusetts, 1982), a film installation about the multiplicity of meanings contained in the protagonist of the film. Bizet’s opera. The film, filmed in Seville, stars Rocío Molina, Vanessa Montoya and Yinka Esi Graves. At Macba, from 19/VII to 3/XI, in collaboration with TBA21, Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza’s foundation.
Lovers of good photography will find powerful reasons to get lost in exhibition halls throughout the year. La Virreina will dedicate the largest retrospective held to date in Spain of the Canadian Jeff Wall, one of the most influential artists of recent decades, whose images, the result of meticulous preparation of the scene, are often inspired by works of classical painters who brings it to the present day with a cinematic look. A journey through four decades through emblematic pieces collected for the first time in a museum (from 5/17 to 12/13).
The KBr will open its season on February 15 with Catching the Spirit, dedicated to the American Consuelo Kanaga (1894-1978), one of the main photographers of the 20th century who documented everything from urban poverty and labor rights to racial terror and inequality, treasuring some of the most moving portraits of the African-American population (in May he will travel to Madrid). A little earlier, on January 18, FotoColectania will summon 32 authors from its collection (from Leopoldo Pomés or Xavier Miserachs to Laia Abril or Txema Salvans, including Pilar Aymerich or Cristina García Rodero) for a joint narration about The Course of Events .
As for the thematic exhibitions, the CCCB will transport us in the celebration of its thirty years to the American suburbs, emblem of that American dream shattered, whose power of seduction has ended up having a global reach (from 3/19 to 9/8 ). While in this case it is a journey through literature, cinema or photography, the Prado Museum will use painters (Joaquín Sorolla, Darío de Regoyos, Isidro Nonell, Picasso…) to explain how to At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, painting reflected a turbulent period, with great workers’ demands and the loss of the overseas colonies. It is titled Art and social transformations in Spain (1885-1910) and will be on display from 5/21 to 9/22.
Here is one of the exhibitions of the year in Madrid, which presents the work of the painter who lived through two wars and all the exiles from his socio-political commitment of a humanist nature. A production from several international museums that can be seen at the Mapfre Foundation starting on 2/2.
Eighty years after her death, the world has surrendered to the astonishing work of Hilma af Klint, (1862–1944), a visionary artist who believed that angels guided her hand. Aware that the world was not ready for her radical art, she stipulated that her work not be shown until two decades after her disappearance. Today it is one of the most acclaimed and will undoubtedly be one of the main attractions of the Guggenheim Bilbao (from 18/X to 2/II). In New York, in 2016, she broke attendance records (600,000 visitors).
From Cut Piece, in which he invited people to cut off his clothes, to his banned film No.4 (Bottoms), which he created as a “Petition for Peace,” the Tate in London looks back on seven decades of work in a new attempt to vindicate Yoko Ono as a pioneer of performance and conceptual art. Much more than a witch (from 15/II to 1/IX).
And, pay attention, because here come two blockbusters: the most famous triad in the history of art, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael, will have a tribute exhibition at the Royal Academy in London, which will explore their connections and rivalries (from 9/ XI to 16/II). For its part, the National Gallery will celebrate its bicentennial with a monumental Van Gogh with his most famous works from all over the world (from 9/14 to 1/9).
On April 15, 1874, the first Impressionist exhibition opened in Paris. Monet, Renoir, Degas, Morisot, Pissarro, Sisley and Cézanne decided to break the rules and organize their own exhibition, outside the official channels. The Musée d’Orsay brings them together again to celebrate the birth of impressionism (from 26/III to 14/VII) while the Center Pompidou will celebrate one hundred years of surrealism (from 4/IX to 6/I), the highlight of a season in which he will also have Constantin Brancusi as the main guest (from 3/27 to 6/1).
