Endgame. Duchamp, chess and the avant-gardes
Curated by Manuel Segade
Fundació Joan Miró
October 29, 2016 – January 22, 2017
Press release
Fundació Joan Miró and the BBVA Foundation presentEndgame. Duchamp, chess and the avant-gardes
The exhibition had its official opening on October 27 at 19:30, attended by Oriol Junqueras, Vice-President and Minister of Economy and Finance of the Catalan Government, Francisco González, President of the BBVA Foundation, and Jaume Freixa, President of Fundació Joan Miró.
After a guided tour, Jaume Freixa explained that the exhibit “is an attempt to retrace the journey from the first avant-gardes to conceptual art,with the chessboard as backdrop and Duchamp as master of ceremonies.” He also expressed his satisfaction at the ongoing collaboration between Fundació Joan Miró and the BBVA Foundation, describing it as adding depth and variety year after year to the institution’s exhibition program.
Francisco González, President of the BBVA Foundation, remarked that “Catalonia has always stood out for its innovative, pluralist culture. This is a spirit it shares with the BBVA Group, which, as you know, has here one of its largest, most solid and most valued customer bases. For this reason, we are delighted to prolong and expand our preferential relationship with Fundació Miró, an institution rooted deeply in this land’s innovative tradition.”
Endgame. Duchamp, chess and the avant-gardes revisits the history of modern art through the prism of its relationship with chess. Itconsiders the game of chess as a leitmotiv running through the artistic avant-gardes, employed here as a metaphor that sheds aninnovative and, at times, playful light on the history of modern art.
The exhibition brings together some eighty works including paintings and sculptures, many of them on show for the first time in Spain, from some of the most influential artists of the 20th century, drawn from major public and private collections in Europe, America and the Middle East.
Highlights includeMarcel Duchamp’s The Chess Game from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Paul Klee’s oil paintingÜberschachfrom the Kunsthaus in Zurich, joined by pieces from the Centre Pompidou and the Israel Museum, and outstanding works by Kandinsky, Sonia Delaunay and Mercè Rodoreda.
The selection spans a prolonged time period from 1910 to 1972, and also features four Duchamp ready-mades and a dozen historical chess sets, some designed by leading lights of the avant-garde and the beginnings of conceptual art, such as Calder, Ernst, Noguchi or Yoko Ono. The exhibit is rounded off by a wealth of original documents, including books, posters, photographs, films and sound recordings from public and private archives.
Sponsored by the BBVA Foundation, Endgame. Duchamp, chess and the avant-gardeswill run from October 29, 2016 to January 22, 2017. Images of the inaugural event and the exhibition itself are available from:
For more information:
Elena Febrero | Amanda Bassa
Fundació Joan Miró Press Office
+34 93 443 9070
Silvia Churruca
Director of Communications and Institutional Relations
Fundación BBVA
+34 91 374 5210