Bilbao,
From Durero to Gerhard Richter, passing through Leonardo, Rafael, Rembrandt, Goya, Toulouse-Lautrec, Picasso, Schiele or Vasarely, the Budapest Arts Museum of Budapest has a relevant collection of drawings and prints dated throughout seven centuries, one of the most prominent internationally in what has to do with these techniques. 150 of these compositions, selected by the diversity of their genres, the innovation of their aesthetics or their formal solutions, are part of a sample in the Guggenheim Bilbao museum that wants to high same, especially in the Renaissance and the reform.
Twelve sections articulate this exhibition, which has been curated by Kinga Bodi and Marta Blávia and that emphasizes the connections between the two disciplines; Although these sections are chronologically structured, traditional labels to provide broader approaches to the possibilities of these paper creations have been intended: on the one hand, very diverse techniques of both the drawing (charcoal, clarion, Chinese ink, watercolor, mixed procedures) and of the engraving (xylographies, serigraphies, trafficinals, trafficinals, digital technologies); On the other, it affects the diverse functionality of these works, from the sketches or preparatory studies in diverse degree to the autonomous, experimental or those that already advance towards the lands of other disciplines. The ultimate goal is that the viewer can discover to what extent these pieces, to a large extent considered minor in terms of its exhibition dissemination until a few decades ago, have had an impact to take into account on the visual culture as a whole.
It is convenient to keep in mind that the drawing was the first form of artistic expression and that it has never lost its dynamic character, and that the engraving, which emerged in the fifteenth century and consolidated in the Renaissance, came to evident both the production of images and its expansion, and with it also the circulation of ideas of which it would be catalyzer, in space and in time.
The exhibition begins by reviewing the evolution of these graphic creations in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; In the beginning, these compositions were anonymous and they are likely to have a collective use in the artist workshops. The proliferation of paper mills around 1400 had a lot to do with the expansion of the creation of drawings and would also foster the prints, executed the first with wooden plates and gradually, later, with metal plates. From the beginning these works had a religious or secular character, and an important chapter was starred by the cards.
Among the first great recorders was the aforementioned Durero, a crucial figure for the knowledge of the novelties of the Italian Renaissance in northern Europe and artistic father of Cranach El Viejo and Hans Baldung Grien. From the hand of that same artist, the interest in the landscape and in the capture of urban and natural scenes, a current that would fructify in Brueghel the old and his followers, who brought those issues to drawings, in addition to paintings, also flourished. Already in the sixteenth century, and in Italy, the representation of the human body, which had in Leonardo and Rafael two of its main artists became important: the first from verismo, the second since idealization.
A second room from the exhibition leads us from the seventeenth to the 19th century, and from the North Europe to France, Rome and Venice. If the Dutch authors observed thoroughly and with a naturalistic spirit faces and landscapes under the influence of Calvinism and the church doctrine, putting their grain of sand in realism later applied to still lifes and natures, in France the creation of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, driven by Charles Le Brun, supposed a milestone in the teaching (European) of the drawing, being its fundamental themes. Guggenheim has arrived from Poussin and Claudio de Lorena, which would have an impact on neoclassical aesthetics.
As for Italy, he did not lose his artistic relevance in the 18th century thanks to Tiepolo and the Vedute of Canaletto, extraordinarily broadcast among European travelers, while William Hogarth or Goya used these techniques for the purpose of satire and social criticism.
The exhibition underlines the art of the nineteenth century, and of course their drawings and engravings, sprout directly from the observation, a common link of realistic and impressionists: one and the other used the drawing to reproduce forms and transfer essences. Post -impressionists (Van Gogh, Munch) and Austrians (Klimt, Schiele, Kokoschka) followed their trail in the exploration of the human psyche, sometimes demolishing conventions.
This project ends reviewing the reflection in drawings and engravings of the trends previous and after World War II, from expressionism to abstraction: both consolidated in the last century as autonomous practices, not so much preparatory, destined for exploration and discovery. Before finishing our visit, a documentary chapter allows us to delve into the history, random, of these Hungarian funds, from their treasurement first by the Esterhazy aristocrats to their expansion endeavored by the successive directors and conservatives of the Budapest Museum.
“Budapest paper masterpieces”
Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
Avenida Abandoibarra, 2
Bilbao
From February 28 to May 25, 2025
