Balenciaga and Spanish painting
The Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum presented through September 22, 2019, the exhibition Balenciaga and Spanish painting, connecting the work of Cristóbal Balenciaga, the most admired and influential fashion designer of all time, with the tradition of 16th- to 20th-century Spanish painting.
Banco Santander Collection
References to Spanish art and culture are a recurring presence in Balenciaga’s work. Balenciaga constantly studied the history of art and made use of these influences, expressed through his own powerful and unique style, throughout his career, including his most avant-garde period, reviving historic garments and reinterpreting them in a strikingly modern manner.
The exhibition, curated by Eloy Martínez de la Pera, includes a carefully-selected group of paintings loaned from private Spanish collections and public museums, including the Museo Nacional del Prado and the Museum of Fine Arts of Bilbao. They are accompanied by a group of important creations by Balenciaga -loaned from the Museo Balenciaga in Guetaria, Museo del Traje in Madrid and Museu del Disseny in Barcelona and other international and national private collections- some of them never previously exhibited before.
How Balenciaga was inspired by the Old Masters
In the following short video, Christie’s Old Masters Specialist Jonquil O’Reilly and exhibition curator Eloy Martínez de la Pera tour Balenciaga and Spanish painting while on view at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid, and discuss the influence of Old Master paintings on the iconic designer’s creations. Enjoy!
75.5 x 50.3 inches, Liria Palace Collection, Madrid
Here is a link to an online interactive publication published by the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum for the exhibition Balenciaga and Spanish painting.
About the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum
The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection is one of the most important private collections of paintings of the 20th century. Although originally a private collection, today it belongs to the Spanish public after its acquisition by the government in 1993, just a year after the museum opened. In 2004 a significant part of the Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection was added to it; a collection of over two hundred works that add to the examples of artistic styles and genres of the permanent collection.
The addition of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum to Madrid created one of the most important concentrations of art in the world in the heart of the city. With the Prado Museum and the Museo Reina Sofía, the “Art Triangle” was formed.
Dürer, Rafael, Titian, Rubens, Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Manet, Renoir, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Kandinsky, Picasso, Hopper, Rothko. This is just part of the impressive list of great names that make up this collection, the work of just two generations. As though from a textbook, all the artistic movements of Western art from the 13th to 20th centuries are included in the collection, highlighting the exquisite taste of Baron Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza (1875-1947) and of his son Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza (1921-2002).
To learn more visit the Thyssen-Bornemisza website.
