Museo Carmen Thyssen

In collaboration with:  

The exhibition invites visitors to explore one of the main themes in European art from the late 1800s to the mid-1900s: the Mediterranean as a stimulus and source of a new, modern approach to classicism and as a setting for landscapes and scenes of everyday life.

This rediscovered territory was the main subject of much of the output of many Spanish and French painters and sculptors of the period, such as Signac, Matisse, Bonnard, Picasso, Sunyer, Torres-García, Sorolla, Anglada-Camarasa and Mir, among many others. In it they found an intense light that stimulated vibrant chromatic experiences. But above all the Mediterranean represented a shared artistic identity and the essence of a common culture which, steeped in the mythical aura of a golden age lost and found, provided artists with a point of departure to which they could return to invent a new art from the origins at the beginning of modernity and at the height of the avant-garde movement, and reaffirmed their status as the modern heirs of the ancient Mare Nostrum.

Featuring more than 60 works belonging to movements ranging from Post-Impressionism, symbolism, Catalan noucentisme and Fauvism to a classicism revisited during the interwar period, this exhibition shows how the Mediterranean was a melting pot of artistic tradition and modernity, of classicism rediscovered and bursts of colour, through various genres (figures, mythological themes, views and landscapes, and genre scenes). It also establishes a dialogue between the parallel and complementary works of French and Spanish artists who together shaped the captivating image of a modern and reinvented Eden that continues to fascinate viewers with all the intensity of a first glimpse at an unexplored territory.

The exhibition is part of the Picasso-Méditerranée international project, an initiative of the Musée national Picasso-Paris. The exhibitions, activities and scientific exchanges included in this programme, in which more than 70 international institutions are taking part, are scheduled for between 2017 and 2019: www.picasso-mediterranee.org  

  With the special support of 

Image:

Joaquim Sunyer, Mediterranean, c. 1910-1911. Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection © Joaquim Sunyer, VEGAP, Málaga, 2018
Aristide Maillol. Méditerranée, 1905. Colección particular. © Aristide Maillol, VEGAP, Málaga, 2018
Paul Signac. Saint-Tropez. Le quai, 1899. Musée de l’Annonciade, Saint-Tropez. Donación de Berthe Signac, 1942