Josef Albers/Joan Miró, Palma de Mallorca

2014-07-Albers-MiroJosef Albers/Joan Miró The Thrill of Seeing, Fundacion Joan y Pilar Miró, Palma de Mallorca, 23 MAY – 21 SEPTEMBER 2014.
Exhibition contrasting the abstract art of two twentieth-century artists, who though they never met, the co-curators (Directors of the artists’ respective foundations) believe shared an inclusive vision. The show integrates Miró’s paintings, drawings, and sculpture, all from the collection of the Fundacion Joan y Pilar Miró, with Albers’s paintings, prints, and glass work, all from the Albers Foundation in Connecticut, so as to reveal “astounding visual and spiritual similarities”. [Reviewed in the news section of Guardian 12/07/14 p.21]
A two-page tri-lingual colour-illustrated leaflet about the exhibition can be downloaded from the exhibition web page (English text: http://miro.palmademallorca.es/documentos/D_428.pdf)

Documentary Photography in 1970s Spain, Madrid

2014-07-photoespana-logoTan lejos, tan cerca: Documentalismo fotográfico en los años 70
(Madrid: Real Jardín Botánico – CSIC, 4 Jue – 27 July 2014). Images by leading documentary photographers of 1970s Spain. Works by Anna Turbau, Cristina García Rodero, Cristóbal Hara, Fernando Herráez, Koldo Chamorro, Ramón Zabalza show rural and small-town societies, their festivals and their traditions, including those of marginalised cultures.

 

photobooks: Spain 1905-1977, Madrid

2014-07-Photobooks Spain 1905-1977photobooks: Spain 1905-1977 (Madrid: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, 28 May, 2014 – 5 January, 2015). Exhibition organised in collaboration with Acción Cultural Española (AC/E) and curated by Horacio Fernández.
Shows the history of the photobook in Spain, from the beginning of the 20th century to the mid-1970s. The selection is drawn from the Museo Reina Sofía collection, together with an assortment of complementary material.
Accompanied by a catalogue raisonné of the collection, jointly published by the Museo Reina Sofía, Acción Cultural Española (AC/E) and RM.

Tamayo Museum on Tour: La Jolla

2014-07-tamayo_rufino_retrato_de_olga_0Treasures of the Tamayo Museum, Mexico City on Tour, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (La Jolla), 17 May – 31 August 2014.
Highlights from one of Mexico’s leading museums of modern and contemporary art, the Tamayo Museum which opened in 1981 to house the collections of Rufino Tamayo (1899-1991), of both his own art and works by contemporary artists from Mexico, Europe and USA.
The exhibition includes paintings by the artist, objects owned by him and works acquired since his death. Other Mexican artists exhibited include paintings by Francisco Toledo (born 1940) whose work influenced by Zapotec stone carvings and the Oaxacan landscape Tamayo championed.
Bilingual online captions to selected highlights from the exhibition can be found at http://www.mcasd.org/tours/treasures-of-tamayo.

Daniel Vázquez Díaz, Oviedo

2014-07-Daniel Vazquez DiazDaniel Vázquez Díaz (1882-1969), Museo de Bellas Artes de Asturias, Oviedo, 17 June – 21 September.
40 portrait drawings of the artist’s contemporaries selected from the series Hombres de mi tiempo in the collection of the Madrid-based Fundación Mapfre. Alongside the drawings the Asturias museum is also showing a key painting Bañistas / Desnudos en la piscina‘ (1930-1935), by the artist, who was a leading figurative artist during the first half of the 20th century, but whose style changes dramatically after the Spanish Civil War.

Picasso: Barcelona

Picasso 018Picasso: Paisajes de Barcelona, Museu Picasso, Barcelona, 29 May – 18 September. Exhibition focusing on local landscapes painted and drawn by Picasso mainly between 1895 and 1903 as he was developing his own personal style. He returned to paint the city once more in 1917 in a radically different manner. The works are shown beside archival photographs of the views. As the Ruiz Picasso family first settled in Barcelona close to the port, the earliest views (1895-99) are of the sea, its breakwaters, port facilities and nearby streets and factories. He later moved his attention to ceremonial and ancient Barcelona , focusing on the Romanesque and Gothic cloisters of its  Cathedral and churches in the Ciutat Vella, and also developed skyline views as seen from his families rooftop terrace or azotea. In the early 20th century he increasingly developed views through windows, portals and doorways capturing, contrasting or merging the internal and external.

100 years of Gallegan art. Centro Sociocultural Fundación Novacaixagalicia, La Coruña

2014-07-centro_sociocultural_a_coruna100 years of Gallegan art, Centro Sociocultural Fundación Novacaixagalicia,  La Coruña, 19 June – 31 August.
Some 40 or so works covering the 19th century through to the end of the 20th century all available for sale.  Major paintings from the early 19th century, some never before shown in public, include works by Fernando Álvarez de Sotomayor, such as his Young Serving Girl dressed in regional costume. Later Gallegan artists shown are Díaz Pardo, Colmeiro, Frau, Laxeiro, Maside, Arturo Souto, Manuel Pesqueira and include two paintings by the Coruñan artist Urbano Lugrís, one a landscape the other a genre painting. Early 20th-century art is represented by four canvases by Luis Seoane, showing his interpretation of cubist line and colour. Further 20th-century art includes sculptures in bronze, marble and wood by amongst other Xoán Piñeiro, Galicia’s leading sculptor of the 20th century.

Frivolite: Indumentaria del siglo XVIII. Museo San Telmo, San Sebastián

2014-07-Frivolite-MuseoSanTelmoSanSebastianFrivolite: Indumentaria del siglo XVIII. Colección del Museo San Telmo
San Sebastián’s Museo San Telmo displays for the first time 42 items from its collection of 18th-century costume, 14 June – 28 September.
The exhibition includes entire dress combinations along with stockings and accessories such as fans and bags all placed in context by prints, paintings and fashion magazines of the period. It is accompanied by an audiovisual display of the conservation of the items before display. The great part of the museum’s costume collection was donated in the 1940s by the wife of the local painter Santiago Arcos Ugalde (Santiago, Chile 1852-1912 San Sebastián). The artist may have collected the costume as props to aid him in the production of his historical genre paintings or to use in the fancy-dress parties that they regularly attended. According to at least one label sewn into a jacket, some of the items belonged to the French actress Vieginie Dejazet, who specialized in playing historical roles of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Eduardo Chillida: San Sebastián

Chillida_Mural izdo..inddEduardo Chillida (1924-2002) Bideak/Caminos/Paths, Sala kubo-kutxa Aretoa, San Sebastián, 20 June – 28 September, 2014.
The first survey exhibition since 1992 about the Basque sculptor to open in the city of his birth, where he lived and developed his career over more than 50 years. This exhibition of 140 works, large and small, sculptures and works on paper, particularly focuses on Chillida as a defender of the environment. The earliest work dates from 1954 and the latest from 2000, when he sculpted his homage to his wife Pili in alabaster, and includes drawings for his most emblematic monumental sculpture Peine del viento (1990), created at the suggestion of his wife, which has become symbolic of the San Sebastián coastline.

De Goya à Delacroix: Musée Rolin, Autun

2014-06-Goya-Delacroix-AutunDe Goya à Delacroix: les relations artistiques de la famille Guillemardet, Musée Rolin, Autun, 21 June – 21 September 2014. Exhibition organized in collaboration with the Louvre about the Burgundian doctor and mayor of Autun (1791) Ferdinand Guillemardet, who became French ambassador to Spain and formed close family relations with Goya, who painted his portrait. A passionate art collector Guillemardet  was one of the first to acquire a series of Goya’s Los Caprichos prints. His son subsequently became friends with Delacroix