“Oceana. A Vision of the Sea in the BBVA Collection”
More information
Curated by: Alicia Chillida
Free admision
Dates: 6 July-17 September 2023 (Closed on 25th August)
Venue: Palacio de San Nicolás. Plaza de San Nicolás, 4. Bilbao
Opening hours: Monday to Sunday, 11 am – 7 pm
Guided tours free-of-charge Wednesdays at 5.30 pm and Saturdays at 11 noon
For more information and to enrol in advance: reservas@didark.es and 91 196 70 99 (Mon-Fri, 9 am – 5 pm)
Groups with independent guide: booking required
Wheelchair access through Fueros Street
This exhibition, which borrows its title from a poem by Pablo Neruda, is made up of a selection of artworks—from the extensive BBVA Collection—whose core theme is the sea. The Chilean poet wrote Oceana while at high sea, on board a cargo ship making the crossing from Marseilles to Havana, between 23 and 24 November 1960. Oceana defends the female gender of the sea and is used as a noun that generically embraces the whole of the planet’s seas, rivers, and oceans.
The sea is the medium through which the process of globalisation took place from the fifteenth century onward with the conquest of America, thus ushering in the Modern Age and turning an abysm into an opening. The narrative of this show, which does not follow a chronological timeline, extends from the sixteenth century to the present day, a long span dotted with many watershed moments between different spaces, times, and artists. The project offers a poetic reading through modernity, striking up a dialogue between works by Spanish and foreign artists, some of which come from other public and private collections.
The major impact of human activity on nature has caused an imbalance that has led to the current environmental crisis. At the present time, the climate emergency is threatening the planet, and the sea is critical in the organisation of atmospheric cycles, as a carbon sink, and as the habitat of many species in danger of extinction. And although we still experience a sense of ecstasy when contemplating the sea, what is truly imperative today is an awareness of looking after the environment.
Oceana acknowledges how much both painting and literature have relied on the sea—the natural limit of human enterprise—as a gateway to knowledge and as an overarching metaphor for life.
Alicia Chillida
Juan de la Corte - View II of Naval Battle of Pernambuco - ca. 1632