Art and Spirituality. Imagining the Extraordinary in the BBVA Collection arrives to the Royal Botanical Garden of Madrid after its presentation in Bilbao

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Art and Spirituality. Imagining the Extraordinary in the BBVA Collection

Art and Spirituality. Imagining the Extraordinary in the BBVA Collection arrives to the Royal Botanical Garden of Madrid after its presentation in Bilbao

Dates: 8 September – 23 October 2022
Venue: Pabellón Villanueva, Real Jardín Botánico. Plaza de Murillo, 2. Madrid
Opening hours: Monday to Sunday, 10 am – 7.30 pm (September), 10 am – 6.30 pm (October)
Guided tours Tuesdays at 5 pm and Saturdays at 12 noon, booking in advance: info@didark.es / 91 196 70 99 (9 am – 2 pm)
Groups with independent guide: booking required
Music and Spirituality. Hearing the Extraordinary. Playlist downloadable from Spotify
Publication: catalogue with an essay by the curator. On sale at exhibition venue
Useful information on www.rjb.csic.es

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. The project, presented this year at the Palacio de San Nicolás in Bilbao, now moves, with an expanded repertoire, to the privileged setting of the Royal Botanical Garden in Madrid (Villanueva Pavilion).

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".

Catalogue

Notes on the works

Hearing the Extraordinary