Art and Spirituality. Imagining the Extraordinary in the BBVA Collection

More information

Free admision
Dates: 31 March – 5 June 2022
Venue: Palacio de San Nicolás, 4 – 48005 Bilbao
Opening hours: Monday to Sunday, 11 am – 7 pm.
Guided tours free-of-charge Wednesdays at 6 pm and Saturdays at 12 noon
Groups with independent guide: booking required
Wheelchair access through Fueros Street
Music and Spirituality. Hearing the Extraordinary. Playlist downloadable from Spotify
Publication: catalogue with an essay by the curator. Trilingual edition (Spanish, English, Basque). On sale at exhibition venue

Virtual tour

Art and Spirituality. Imagining the Extraordinary is an exhibition organised by BBVA and curated by Alfonso de la Torre. It brings together a carefully selected group of works from the historical and contemporary holdings in the BBVA Collection in Spain.

Arranged in four different chapters, around forty classic and modern artworks are seamlessly displayed alongside one another, acknowledging the wealth and diversity of the BBVA Collection in a variety of media and techniques: painting, sculpture, photography and installation as well as videos on loan courtesy of other collections.

The show wishes to highlight the influence that spirituality, understood as a universal phenomenon, has exerted on art creation throughout time.

Leveraging a variety of different resources—like religion, light, energy, emptiness, sublimity, metaphors or symbols—artists from different times have pondered on the purpose of creation and have tried to materialize in their works that essential aspect of the human being, that inner and transcendental element that gives meaning to our lives. Through the encounter with the artwork and appealing to concepts that are hard to express through words, they attempt to conjure a supernatural experience, inviting the beholder to “imagine the extraordinary”.

On the occasion of its opening, the artist Mar Solís -also present in the exhibition- performs RIPPLE. Expansive Wave.
Brochure
Catalogue
Notes on the works

Selected artworks

Pablo Armesto - Estelar 8.50 - 2018
2018
Luis Vélez - Resurrection of the Lord - ca. 1559-1560
ca. 1559-1560
David Teniers II - The Garden of Eden - 1685
1685
Hugo Fontela - Nowhere Island II - 2017
2017
Juan de Soreda - P01663# - ca. 1530
ca. 1530
Ernst Karl Eugen Körner - Die Grotten von Beni Hassan am Nil - nineteenth Century
nineteenth Century
Fernando Zóbel - El jardín del obispo V - 1978
1978
César Manrique - Untitled - 1964
1964
Joaquín Sorolla - Study of a Skull - 1883
1883
Lucio Muñoz - Blanco fin - 1981
1981
Esteban Vicente - Untitled - 1956
1956
Alfonso Albacete - Narciso I - 1986
1986
Manuel Franquelo - Untitled - 1990
1990
Nacho Criado - La voz que clama en el desierto no es la tuya ni es la mía - 1995
1995
Antoni Tàpies - Forme gris bleuâtre - 1955
1955
- Yves Tanguy, "La lumière de l‘ombre (La luz de la sombra)", 1939 -
Ouka Leele - Quizás fuera un hada - 1998
1998
Gerardo Rueda - Astro - 1960
1960
- Joan Ponç, "Barrachú", 1950 -