27 November 2007 to 17 February 2008

Curator: Guillermo Solana

On 27 November the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza is inaugurating the exhibition Modern Masters of Drawing. It comprises a selection of 71 works on paper by some of the leading names of 19th- and 20th-century art including Goya, Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Picasso, Miró, Freud and Warhol. In addition to the importance of the works and the artists represented, another notable element is the fact that all these drawings have been loaned from a Spanish private collection, the Abelló Collection. Such a sizeable group from this collection has never previously been shown to the public.

Since the Renaissance, drawing has been identified as the reflexive process that takes place prior to the creation of a work of art. Rather than merely a first materialisation of an idea, it is thus a crucial element that encompasses both the design and structure of the work. This concept of drawing as a mental process, shared by all the visual arts, functions to reveal to us the most personal and intimate side of the artist: through drawing we appreciate his or her sensibility, intelligence, instinct, emotions, consciousness and the unconsciousness. The idea of the drawing as an autonomous artistic medium only developed with the liberation of the arts in the 19th century and with the quest to express the specific nature of the medium on the part of artists. This quest is the starting-point for the present exhibition, which aims to analyse the key trends in the principal avant-garde art movements through drawing.

Through the work of the artists represented it is possible to follow the evolution of drawing through the 19th and 20th centuries, starting from Goya and concluding with the living British artist Lucian Freud. The exhibition offers a complete overview of the period in question with a particular focus on the last third of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th, the key period for the avant-garde movements from Impressionism to Surrealism.

Still within this chronological time-span, the exhibition places particular emphasis on Spanish drawing due to the international recognition achieved by most of the Spanish artists represented in the exhibition including Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris, Julio González, Óscar Domínguez, Salvador Dalí and Joan Miró.

Image:For more information and images, please contact:

Edgar DegasMuseo Thyssen-Bornemisza / Press office

After the Bath or Woman drying Herself, ca. 1895Tel. +34 913600236/914203944 Fax. +34 914 202 780

Pastel on paper, 525 x 528 mm. ;

Abelló Collection

Drawing in its purest form

The exhibition opens with a magnificent crayon drawing by Goya of his wife, Josefa Bayeu, of 1805. Goya is without doubt the clearest forerunner of modern art, above all in his graphic work, which won him international renown during his own lifetime.

The revolution implied by the rejection of anatomical veracity in the depiction of the human body is already evident in the most important work in the exhibition, Degas’ pastel entitled After the Bath or Woman drying herself (ca.1895). If it is compared to Young Woman arranging her Hair (1939) by Matisse, it is possible to grasp the enormous distance travelled by modern art in its process of moving away from the live model. This process was taken still further, almost to the point of distortion, by Egon Schiele in Crouching Woman (1917).

The exhibition focuses on the interest in colour and quest for sensations and emotions characteristic of Impressionist and Expressionist art, with works by Pissarro, Bonnard, Nolde, Munch and Kandinsky, all represented in the exhibition. It then looks at the emergence of the drawing as an autonomous creation, from Gauguin’s Synthetism to the sophistication of Klimt, the Existentialist nature of Giacometti and the work of Van Gogh. The latter is represented by Head of a Peasant Woman of 1884, a drawing of remarkable expressive force and one of a series of depictions of peasants’ faces that would culminate in the famous painting entitled The Potato Eaters.

Among the most outstanding works in the Abelló Collection and hence to be seen in the exhibition is the impressive group of works on paper by Pablo Picasso. They include Nude Woman (ca.1903), Scene at the Bullfight (1960), Cubist Figure (ca.1914-1915), Bathers (1920) and Horses’ Heads (1933). Together they offer a mini history of Picasso’s work and as such of the art of the 20th century. Also present are works by other artists influenced by Cubism and its derivations, including Juan Gris and María Blanchard (one of Cubism’s earliest followers), Pablo Gargallo and Joaquín Torres García. Together their work confirms Gertrude Stein’s statement that Cubism was essentially Spanish in nature.

Also worthy of note are the drawings by Julio González, a key figure in 20th-century sculpture, not just for his use of iron but also for his so-called “drawing in space”. One of the most expressive examples of this type of drawing is his Tormented Nude (ca.1910-14). In complete contrast due to its schematic simplification and expressive, primitivist rhythm is Standing nude Woman by Brancusi. A tactile sense of form prevails in the work of another great sculptor in the exhibition, Henry Moore, whose Seated Woman (ca.1937) emerges like a huge and majestic idol.

Surrealism, another key avant-garde movement of the 20th century, is also extremely well represented with works by Spanish artists such as Joan Miró, Salvador Dalí (with his masterpiece Portrait of the Artist’s Father and Sister of 1925), Óscar Domínguez, as well as non-Spanish Surrealists such as André Masson and René Magritte.

The exhibition concludes with a small group of works from the second half of the 20th century. They include Study of Katia reading by Balthus (1969), Leaning Head by Lucian Freud (1947) and Portrait of Jean Cocteau by Andy Warhol (1980). These more recent works are shown alongside various late drawings by Miró that end the exhibition, including Homage to Pollock (1978). In this work, and in a way comparable to Pollock’s own style, Miró’s strokes cease to be outlines that separate the interior and exterior of a figure. Rather, they become vectors of force and movement, pathways in which an action faster than thought itself takes place: drawing in its pure state.

EXHIBITION INFORMATION

Title: Masters of Modern Drawing

Dates: 27 November 2007 to 17 February 2008

Organiser: Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza

Number of works: 71

Curator: Guillermo Solana

VISITOR INFORMATION

Address: Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Paseo del Prado 8, 28014 Madrid

Venue: Rooms 47 and 48 (ground floor)

Opening times: Tuesdays to Sundays, 10am to 7pm. Ticket Office closes at 6.30pm

Free entry

INFORMATION FOR PRESS AND IMAGES