Museo Carmen Thyssen

During the Baroque period in Spain the Catholic reaction to the Protestant Reformation gave rise to an art based on realistic and highly dramatic images whose purpose was to inspire devotion through highly emotionally charged depictions of saintliness. This context, in what was known as the Spanish Golden Age (the 17th century), saw the emergence of a notable group of great masters ranging from Ribera, Velázquez and Murillo to the Extremadura-born Francisco Zurbarán (1598–1664).  The work of Zurbarán, the subject of this exhibition, represents a type of religiosity that is gentle and familiar, yet equally moving.

The Saint Marina from the Museo Carmen Thyssen Málaga’s permanent collection, painted around 1640–50, is the starting point for this show: a selection of female saints by Zurbarán that epitomise the brilliant contribution he made to Baroque devotional iconography by creating these archetypes of female saintliness. This repertoire of beautiful, serene women saints embodied models of faith and a pure, virtuous life and prompted the faithful to devotion, meditation and prayer in a less gruesome way than images of female penitents and hermits. Zurbarán's painterly skills, visible in the naturalism of the features and the virtuosic depiction of the clothing, are one of his distinguishing features in this genre.

Although their iconographies differ, the pictures shown here are based on the same compositional model that Zurbarán and his workshop repeated in countless commissions. Standing, splendidly dressed in the fashions of the time and carrying objects related to their hagiographies or generic devotional accessories, the saints are silhouetted against dark backgrounds. Their faces, expertly lit, are emphasised in these representations in semi-darkness, engaging with viewers or engrossed in meditation. These monumental figures, arranged in a row, also form a silent procession of saints transformed into earthly beings.

The series of saints on loan from the Museo de Bellas Artes in Seville – eight canvases out of an original total of twelve, from the Hospital de las Cinco Llagas in that city (c. 1640–50) – illustrates the extraordinary commercial success paintings of this type enjoyed. Zurbarán himself and his skilled assistants tirelessly made replicas and versions of them due to the high demand from a large clientele of religious and welfare establishments in both Andalusia and the Americas, especially during the artist’s mature period. In contrast to these examples of studio products, the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza’s Saint Casilda (c. 1635) is a superb example of the autograph works that served as models for replicas and versions.

Francisco de Zurbarán. Saint Casilda, ca. 1635. Oil on canvas, 171 x 107 cm. Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Francisco de Zurbarán. Saint Marina, ca. 1640-1650. Oil on canvas, 111 x 88 cm. Colección Carmen Thyssen en préstamo gratuito al Museo Carmen Thyssen Málaga.

Some thirty works by more than twenty artists make up this diverse and colourful mosaic of the figurative painting that became a symbol of the new modernity ushered in by Spain’s transition to democracy in the 1980s.

For the main players in this productive period for Spanish contemporary art, it was a decade that vindicated painting: its validity as a means of reinvigorating artistic exploration and its ability to produce original creations that reflected a time of newfound freedoms. A time for taking real pleasure in painting.

Liberated and multicoloured, hedonistic and apolitical in its themes, steeped in expressiveness and captured on large canvases, a new figurative art flourished in the hands of young artists. Some (such as Gordillo, Arroyo and the Schizos of the Madrid figurative movement: Franco, Alcolea, Pérez Villalta, Cobo, Quejido, Molero) had been active since the 1960s and the 1970s; others (García Sevilla, Barceló, Patiño, Lamas, Gadea, Ugalde) joined the pluralistic scene brimming with creativity in the 1980s.

Despite their diverse backgrounds (many were from Andalusia), they all shared the same environment – with Madrid and its vibrant cultural scene, the Movida, as the geographical epicentre – and a generational aim to create a new kind of painting, each from their own approach, in a period of optimism and enthusiasm that was a far cry from the preceding dictatorship.

Surveying the multifarious scene of the time, where figurative art coexisted alongside an abstract art that had also moved on from the Art Informel of the 1950s and 1960s and prevailed over conceptual art, this exhibition examines the pre-eminence of a rebellious and provocative type of painting without rules which championed the playful and frivolous side and the sheer pleasure of painting and looking. It was a liberated painting that artists, critics, galleries and institutions presented as a reflection of the collective liberation of 1980s Spain.

Guillermo Pérez Villalta. Escena. Personajes a la salida de un concierto de rock, 1979
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid
© Guillermo Pérez Villalta, VEGAP, Málaga, 2025

Carlos Alcolea. Los borrachos, 1978-1979
Colección Museo Helga de Alvear, Cáceres
© Carlos Alcolea, VEGAP, Málaga, 2025

Miquel Barceló. Mapa de carne, 1982
Colección de Arte Contemporáneo Fundación “la Caixa”
© Miquel Barceló, VEGAP, Málaga, 2025

Patricia Gadea. Viaje al Monte Negro, 1984
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid
© Patricia Gadea, VEGAP, Málaga, 2025