Less than a month remains to go on a one-hour guided tour of Antoni Gaudí’s Casa Battló in Barcelona, covering its history and the recent renovation of architectural features and interior fittings, such as lighting, windows and hangings. The visit also offers the opportunity to walk along the ‘Pasarela’ at 30 metres above ground level.
Click here for more information on the restoration and visit.
The Prado’s ‘Invited Work’ is a large painting on canvas showing the double Marriages of Martin de Loyola to Beatriz Ñusta and Juan de Borja to Lorenza Ñusta de Loyola painted in 1718 by an anonymous artist from Cusco. On loan from the Museo Pedro de Osma in Lima, it will be on display in Madrid until 28 April 2019. The scene depicted brings together two weddings that actually occurred at different times and places with the purpose of showing the blood ties between the Inca dynasty and descendants of two of the founders of the Society of Jesus, Saint Ignatius Loyola and Saint Francis Borja. The symbolic aim being to represent the conquest of southern America as a harmonious union between Spanish vanquishers and the vanquished.
Click here for more information about this display.
This exhibition, curated by Carmen Pena and realised in partnership with the Sorolla Museum, Madrid, brings together 118 paintings by Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida (Valencia, 1863–Cercedilla, 1923) from the museum and from Spanish private collections.
The exhibition explores how Sorolla, the master of the “open air” and the “intense light”, represented the Spanish landscapes at the turn of the 20th century, bestowing it with new meanings and participating in a cultural movement that sought to create a new image for the country. The display also includes works representing scenes on the seashore and the work of fishermen on the coasts of Valencia, two of Sorolla’s signature themes.
Click here for more information, and stay tuned for the National Gallery’s own exhibition on Sorolla, which opens in four days.
The process of democratisation in Portugal and Spain originated from a similar socio-political context. Besides having an almost identical geographical context, two long authoritarian and military dictatorships shaped the two counties on the basis of a nationalist and deeply catholic identity. From the point of view of popular culture, both dictatorships promoted a disengaged culture, based on songs, football matches, bullfights and the stereotypes of Iberian folklore. In the early 1970s, the illiteracy rate and cultural practices indexes in both countries were still among the highest in Europe. Despite these similar starting conditions, the Portuguese transition to democracy was very different from that of Spain; whereas Portugal created a rupture with the previous institutional context through a military coup, in Spain the post-Franco democratisation was founded on negotiated reform. These two processes of transition to democracy in Portugal and Spain, although dissimilar from each other, led to new ways of both high and popular cultural expressions. As a result, the decade following the two dictatorships was characterised by significant and euphoric experiments in the fields of literature, visual and plastic arts, cinema and music. Scholars have paid scant attention to the ways in which artists thought and put into practice the very notion of democracy in these years. Democracy is a highly contested category, one that has been imagined in many different ways, and any particular realisation of which carries costs as well as benefits. According to the historian of democracy Pierre Rosanvallon (2008), the rise of a democracy entails both a promise and a problem for a society.
This two-day conference aims to innovatively question how artistic practices and institutions formed ways of imagining democracy and by what means arts and culture participate in the wider social struggle to define freedom and equality for the post-Estado Novo and post-Francoist period: how did artistic practices instantiate ideas of democracy in this context? Inversely, how did such democratic values inform artistic practice? How did Portuguese and Spanish artists and intellectuals negotiate between creative autonomy and social responsibility? And more broadly, what is the role of culture in a democracy? The core purpose of the conference is to bring scholars together from different subject areas and exploring any artistic practice (literature, visual and plastic arts, cinema and music). PhD students, early careers and senior researchers are invited to submit an abstract to engage in an interdisciplinary and comparative debate on how the field of culture framed different ideas of democracy in the Iberian post-authoritarian transitions during the 1970s and early 1980s.
Papers will be 30-minutes in length with 15 minutes of discussion time, to enable the fullest exchange. Please submit proposals (300 words) and a short bio to I.ContrerasZubillaga(at)hud.ac.uk and g.quaggio(at)sheffield.ac.uk by the deadline Friday 31 May 2019. The programme will be announced in early July.
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Bigas Luna (1946–2013) is among Spain’s most influential filmmakers. In the 1990s, his popular comedy/drama Jamón, jamón, was among the most studied texts in Hispanic Studies courses in the UK. He also famously launched the careers of Hollywood stars such as Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz.
Over a period of four days and in two different venues, the Bigas Luna Tribute Manchester will include four film screenings, two receptions and an exhibition. The exhibition will remain open for the duration of the festival, until April 13th. The event will include the ‘Iberian Portraits’ trilogy in full with introductory presentations by Bigas Luna specialists, a cava reception following the screening of Jamón, jamón (1992), the first UK screening of the posthumous documentary BigasxBigas (2017) – including a Q&A with its co-director Santiago Garrido Rúa – and the videoart exhibition ‘Barbaric Comedies‘, inspired by Valle-Inclán.
Instituto Cervantes Manchester (326-330 Deansgate Campfield, Avenue Arcade, Manchester M3 4FN).
HOME Manchester (2, Tony Wilson Place, M15 4FN Manchester)
HOME Manchester (2, Tony Wilson Place, M15 4FN Manchester)
HOME Manchester (2, Tony Wilson Place, M15 4FN Manchester)
This exhibition showcases silk and linen fragments spanning the 15th to 17th centuries, a period of expanded exploration and trade, when Italy and Spain emerged as major centres of textile production. During this era, textiles with three-dimensional effects became popular within the Christian church and the secular world. Cloth and threads were fashioned into elaborate embroidery, gilded three-dimensional images, brilliantly-hued reversible fabrics, and even textiles purposely cut in a pattern that revealed glimpses of one’s undergarments below—a style fashionable during the 17th century. To create relief images, professionally trained embroiderers attached applied work, or appliqués, onto garments, such as orphreys – decorative panels for church vestments.
Click here for more information on this exhibition.
Corredor Suspendido I, 2006 925 x 795 cm Hierro dulce trenzado, cables de acero y sombra. Vista de instalación Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, 2013 Foto: Attilio Maranzano
A recipient of Spain’s National Visual Arts Award in 1999, Cristina Iglesias (San Sebastián, 1956) is an internationally renowned Spanish artist. This exhibition consists of a huge collection of pieces that will be on display on the second floor of the west wing of the Centro Botín. Well-known for her sculptural pieces with hanging pavilions, latticework, corridors and labyrinths, Iglesias combines industrial materials and natural elements to create unusual, experiential spaces.
Cristina Iglesias has developed a close relationship with the Fundación Botín and its recently opened arts centre in Santander. This relationship translated into a site-specific sculptural intervention at the Centro Botín and the Pereda Gardens, titled Desde lo subterráneo (From the Underground), which features four pools and a pond in stone, iron and water. Moreover, in September 2018, Iglesias led a Villa Iris Visual Arts Workshop, an annual project sponsored by the Botín Foundation since 1994. The latest grand exhibition by Cristina Iglesias in Spain was on at the Reina Sofía Museum and Arts Centre in 2013. Her upcoming exhibition at the Centro Botín will offer a great chance to enjoy both her older and more recent pieces.
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