Caixa Forum, Madrid
June 2019
June 27–September 29, 2019 The exhibition, La Pintura, Un reto permanente (Painting: A Permanent Challenge), brings together an important selection of works from the ”la Caixa” Collection of Contemporary Art that examines the concept of painting and its ability to reinvent itself. At the beginning of the 20th century, painting abandoned its referential function and entered the realm of ideas. No longer a window onto the world, it became an intellectual representation that constituted an autonomous visual reality. From this moment on, painting has triggered important debates, become a source of inspiration and confrontation, and marked a starting point for numerous contemporary artistic trends. This exhibition explores painting as a mental process, an abstract idea that expands from the canvas to other media such as photography, sculpture, printmaking, or installation. The idea of the pictorial, incorporating a changed understanding of painting, reflects the interstices between the intellectual concept and the sensuality of the material. Painting: A Permanent Challenge brings together works by artists who renewed painting in the 1960s and 1970s and those of a younger generation who have pushed the boundaries of this discipline, reinventing new production and presentation formulas. The exhibition features more than forty works, including those by Robert Ryman, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, Wolfgang Tillmans, Robert Mangold, Ignasi Aballí, Ángela de la Cruz, Ruben Guerrero, Günther Förg, Jessica Stockholder, Juan Uslé, and Richard Tuttle.