Past

Exhibitions

Consult everything you need to know about current and upcoming exhibitions at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.

Exhibitions | Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

Past | Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

Cecilia Bengolea

Artist Talks

Cecilia Bengolea. Animations in water

Audioguide

The Film &amp; Video programming at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is permanently committed to artistic practices associated with the moving image in the context of contemporary visual arts.
Cecilia Bengolea (b. 1979, Buenos Aires) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice merges video, choreography, and sculpture. In her research, Bengolea explores forms of popular dance combining contemporary and archaic elements, giving way to constant redefinitions of the concept of figuration. This exhibition gathers three recent pieces that are representative of the artist’s unique approach to video sculpture—an understanding of moving images as corporeal agencies freely operating in the exhibition space. The ambiguous concept of animation included in the title of the exhibition relates both to the life-like motion of cinematic figures and the more ancient idea of breathing life into the artificial, and vigor into the inert.
In Bengolea’s work, the anima—as soul, breath, or vital energy of a body—is deeply connected to the electrical conductivity of living organisms, while music appears as the contagious force of animation. In their inexhaustible potential to transform, mutate, and mimic others, animated beings identify with the element of water and its endless plasticity.
The recent production Lightning Dance (2018) is, as many of Bengolea’s projects, based on a profound collaboration between the artist and the featured performers, and particularly dancehall artists Craig Black Eagle and Oshane Overload Shankaz. Shot in the Jamaican town of Bog Walk and produced in London, the piece has quickly acquired an iconic value and is part of such collections as TBA21 in Vienna and Tank in Shanghai. Using a single-channel video projection in black and white, Bengolea investigates the influence of atmospheric electricity on behavior and the imagination. It belongs to an ongoing series of works developed by Bengolea around dancehall culture on the island of Jamaica—now a global phenomenon inspiring many subgenres and styles in pop music and dance. The impactful display of this work is joined by two digital animations, Bestiaire (2019) and Favorite Positions (2018). Using hologram-like imagery, the artist visualizes the fantastical transformations of a body in a state of perpetual change. Drawing inspiration from descriptions found in Jorge Luis Borges’s Book of Imaginary Beings (1957), in Bestiaire the artist scanned her body while morphing into a panoply of fantastic creatures. Meanwhile, Favorite Positions summons the octopus’s spirit to suggest a body without boundaries—a fully liquid and immensely sensitive creature whose intelligence is decentralized and multiple, and whose movements freely swap inside and outside, environment and self.
Curator: Manuel Cirauqui
Cecilia Bengolea 
Lightning Dance, 2018 
Video projection, black and white, sound, 6 min., 3 sec. 
Courtesy the artist and Galería Àngels Barcelona 
© Cecilia Bengolea

The Film &amp; Video programming at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is permanently committed to artistic practices associated with the moving image in the

Cecilia Bengolea. Animations in water | Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

“My experience in this program has brought boundless joy to me. Throughout the years, we’ve managed to carry out beautiful and significant projects. This year, in the context of the pandemic, our work has been vital.”
Elssie Ansareo

Artists

Ansareo, Elssie

“The program was warmly welcomed by girls and boys, hooked from day one. I was amazed by their eagerness to learn, by the questions they asked, and the comments they made on my work, the work of Olafur Eliasson, and the work of other artists who use water to explore the relationship between humans and their environment. The place you live in is so important! Every Thursday, coming to Concha School, the entrance to Carranza Valley through Alto de La Escrita and the views from El Suceso changed my mood, made me feel calmer, ready for a new, intense session. The landscape, the area where this wonderful group is growing up. I hope I’ve made my contribution too!”
Ibon Garagarza

Garagarza, Ibon

“Being able to say things without words. Meeting new people at a time when social interaction is restricted to a small bubble. Building in groups without neglecting our own personal mark. Focusing on the personal element to look around and reach out to your classmates and create together. Learning Through Art gave us the tools we need to experiment, enjoy, and learn from diversity at a time when children had to grapple with social distancing and the dullness of life under lockdown.”
Zaloa Ipiña

Ipiña, Zaloa

“It’s been an exciting experience. The idea was to make an intervention in the school surroundings. The widespread use of Basque fonts in stores and restaurants caught our eye. We went on a photo safari, capturing all these signs. Then we appropriated them and used them to design the messages we wanted to post on the streets. Same fonts, new readings.”
Nerea Lekuona

Lekuona, Nerea

“This year’s been special. Given the circumstances, we had the chance to take a different approach. We worked outdoors with ephemeral and action art. It’s been a nurturing experience. We discussed the digestive system from a physical and conceptual point of view. Kids take all this naturally. What art does is what they usually do, so the affinity is obvious – representing, doing over, as in a game. This is how little artists understand art at large on the basis of a particular project.”
Manu Muniategiandikoetxea

Muniategiandikoetxea, Manu

“I’ve had an exciting but strange experience this year. It was exciting because I was in contact with a group of inquisitive and receptive boys and girls who wanted to learn and understand, and I had the role of transferring ideas to them. It was strange because of the circumstances, which have restricted our lives so much, and because the experience was shorter than usual, forcing us to speed up.”
Ibon Sáenz de Olazagoitia

Sáenz de Olazagoitia, Ibon

Learn with BBK

CONCHA SCHOOL, Carranza

WE’RE SCIENTISTS!

BELASKOENEA SCHOOL, Irún

DIGESTION AND CREATION

LABASTIDA SCHOOL, Labastida

MESSAGES ON THE STREETS

JUAN RAMÓN JIMÉNEZ SCHOOL, Cruces-Barakaldo

POINT/LINE/PLANE/BOX/BOOM!

PÍO BAROJA SCHOOL, Bilbao

WALKING PAINTINGS

SAN IGNACIO SCHOOL, Getxo

SCHOOLYARD FEELINGS

Every summer, this exhibition brings Learning Through Art –an initiative involving art and education that unfolds throughout the school year–to a close. During the eight sessions of this year’s program, which began in March for public health reasons, students from six schools worked on curricular subjects, such as geometry and volume, the organs in the human body, or science experiments from a different perspective: art.
In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the sessions took place in schoolyards, open areas, parks, etc., as this year we wanted to focus on street art and the creation of healthy spaces. Walking our usual places brought a few pleasant surprises: we discovered walls, squares, and gardens we had never seen before. The program was shorter this year, but it was carried out with the same effort and enthusiasm–or even more, if that were possible.
The artists who embarked on this adventure with us were Elssie Ansareo, Ibon Garagarza, Zaloa Ipiña, Nerea Lekuona, Manu Muniategiandikoetxea, and Ibon Sáenz de Olazagoitia. They have worked with more than 100 schoolchildren, encouraging them to explore their surroundings and engage in creative processes of their own. This led the kids to think, appreciate, choose, try, wonder, have fun, get lost, and, of course, go wrong, for there can be no progress without mistakes. Learning Through Art is a program where questions are made, curiosity is kindled, and there is room for improvisation and play, for exploration, experimentation, and research.
With this exhibition, which displays part of the work done, the artistic process comes full circle. Visitors have the unexpected chance of coming into contact with fresh, original points of view, inspiring insights, and the excitement of discovery and creation, as experienced by schoolchildren.

BILBAO-NEW YORK EXCHANGE

PROGRAM

HISTORY

Learning Through Art 2021

Every summer, this exhibition brings Learning Through Art –an initiative involving art and education that unfolds throughout the school year–to a close.

Learning Through Art 2021 | Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

The Line of Wit

Opening Tour

An Introductory Talk

Gallery 305

Defying tradition

Gallery 306

Modes of Representation

Gallery 307

Methods and Materials

The Line of Wit presents a focused selection of work characterized as humorous, clever, experimental, and inquisitive in nature. Ranging from the 1950s to the present, these works employ unusual materials and techniques, and playfully defy aesthetic conventions demonstrating ingenuity and wit. Bringing together artists of different generations working across a variety of media, the exhibition includes rarely seen treasures and beloved works from the Guggenheim Bilbao’s permanent collection alongside key long-term loans, some of which have never before been on view in the Museum. The mixing of high and low, ordinary and sublime, humor and earnestness can be traced throughout the exhibition challenging hierarchies that underpin the fine arts.

TECHNIQUES AND EXPERIMENTATION

WHAT AND HOW

THE ASSOCIATION OF MATERIALS, TECHNIQUES, AND IDEAS

SERIALITY AS A STRATEGY

﻿﻿EXPERIMENTATION

QUESTIONABLE ASSUMPTIONS

The Line of Wit presents a focused selection of work characterized as humorous, clever, experimental, and inquisitive in nature. Ranging from the 1950s to

The Line of Wit | Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

The Roaring Twenties

BBK_new

Images of the Exhibition in the Museum

Gallery 204 and 205

Moving on from Trauma

Gallery 206

New Roles, New Models

Gallery 207

New Ways of Seeing

Gallery 209

Lust

Gallery 203

Work, Leisure, Design, and Architecture

Gallery 202

Fashion Revolution

Gallery 208

New Notions of the Body

The 1920s were a decade of both progression and backlash. A catastrophic World War followed by a pandemic with remarkable parallels to the current coronavirus crisis awakened people’s thirst for life. At no time in the 20th century was the desire for change more intense. Cities grew at breakneck speed and new visions were created. Conventional role models in society and the family were questioned and upended; disadvantaged social groups made their voices heard in culture and politics. Improved conditions for workers went hand in hand with a growing leisure industry. The spirit of innovation fed through directly into art, with experimentation in all disciplines. Remarkably, the products of this era have lost almost none of their relevance today.

NEWS FLASH!  THE IMPORTANCE OF THE PERFORMING ARTS

TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES

SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERIES

WOMENS'S SUFRAGE AND SOCIETY

POLITICS AND THE EUROPEAN CONTEXT

NEW DANCES TO NEW BEATS

CAFES: MEETING POINTS

THE EXPERIMENTAL THEATER  OF MAX REINHARDT

The 1920s were a decade of both progression and backlash. A catastrophic World War followed by a pandemic with remarkable parallels to the current

The Roaring Twenties | Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

Alex Reynolds

Talks with Artists

Alex Reynolds. There Is a Law, There Is a Hand, There Is a Song

The Film &amp; Video exhibitions program at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is permanently committed to artistic practices associated with the moving image in the context of contemporary visual arts.
The work of artist and filmmaker Alex Reynolds (b. 1978, Bilbao) constantly explores our modes of relation and affection as they appear embodied in the cinematic language. Altering narrative structures, commands and rhythms in production, playing with the conventions of acting and storytelling as well as the role of the viewer, the artist defies our perception beyond the perimeter of the screen and the realm of images. Thus she transforms objects and events in the exhibition space as well, suspending the automatisms of meaning.
This exhibition presents three recent works by Reynolds, between which a triangulation of ideas – the norm, the acting hand, the singing voice – circulates ceaselessly. The film Palais, shot in Brussels inside the imposing architecture of the Palace of Justice, presents a silent walkthrough of the labyrinthine administrative facilities of a 19th-century building. Intimations of curiosity, humorous mischief, and uncanny trepidation seem to overlap as we follow the camera through a monumental space marked by imperial iconography. At the other side of the anteroom, a tuning fork is presented and surreptitiously vibrates through the air. Traditionally used for fine-tuning musical instruments, this object has been custom-made to portray the exact voice pitch of a person known to the artist, and after whose name – Justine – the piece is titled.
On view in the main gallery is Reynolds’s most recent film work, made in collaboration with Swedish choreographer Alma Söderberg. Co-produced by the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, The Hand that Sings builds a web of connecting gestures, voicings, and images in time. These elements mimic each other following an open associative sequence: from the extraction of oak bark in Extremadura during the yearly cork harvest, to the peeling of an orange before a handheld fire or the act of washing someone’s hand; from the tremor of leaves to that of a voice, to a bird’s flapping wings in the distance or, again, the feedback loop between the performer’s chant and hand movements. Words in Spanish and English are traded over a rooftop as we get a glimpse of the Palace of Justice in the Brussels skyline. Sensorial resistance to fixity and hierarchy, focus on transformation with all senses engaged in the process, are key aspects to this new work. Both free-form and minutely composed, The Hand that Sings proposes a lyrical interplay of correspondences where bodies, landscape, and the camera jointly perform, attuned to one another.
Curator: Manuel Cirauqui
Alex Reynolds &amp; Alma Söderberg 
The Hand that Sings (La mano que canta), 2021 
HD Video, color, sound (production image) 
Courtesy of the artists and Marta Cervera Gallery 
© Alex Reynolds and Alma Söderberg

The Film &amp; Video exhibitions program at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is permanently committed to artistic practices associated with the moving image

Alex Reynolds. There Is a Law, There Is a Hand, There Is a Song | Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

Bilbao and Painting

Lecture

Shared Reflections

Paco Durrio, Jewelry Designer: Modernity and Avant-garde

Creative Sessions

Bilbo and Painting

Guided Tour

IBERDROLA

BILBAO: PORT & MARKET

THE VILLAGE & THE SEA

DANCE IN PAINTING

PACO DURRIO: BILBAO-PARIS CONNECTION

This exhibition is the visual history of a town, nineteenth-century Bilbao, which, in spite of being invaded by the French, besieged by the Carlists, and struck by various cholera epidemics—the first in 1834, the fourth and last in 1893—, consolidates economically as a great city, in which a significant number of great artists, who had previously passed through Paris, will thrive. Through twenty-seven pictorial scenes, like time-songs or greatest hits, we delve into the history of our city. These paintings sharpen that dual faculty of memory and knowledge that great painting makes possible.
Curator: Kosme de Barañano

This exhibition is the visual history of a town, nineteenth-century Bilbao, which, in spite of being invaded by the French, besieged by the Carlists, and

Bilbao and Painting | Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

Art, Science, and Synesthesia

Talk

Vasily Kandinsky was born on December 16, 1866, in Moscow. From 1886 through 1892 he studied law and economics at the University of Moscow, where he lectured after graduation. In 1896 he declined a teaching position in order to study art in Munich with Anton Azbe from 1897 to 1899 and at the Kunstakademie with Franz von Stuck in 1900. Kandinsky taught in 1901–03 at the art school of the Phalanx, a group he cofounded in Munich. One of his students, Gabriele Münter, would be his companion until 1914. In 1902 Kandinsky exhibited for the first time with the Berlin Secession and produced his first woodcuts. In 1903 and 1904 he began his and Münter’s travels in Italy, the Netherlands, and North Africa and his visits to Russia. He showed at the Salon d’Automne in Paris from 1904.

Kandinsky, Vasily

Kandinsky

Presentation talk

Virtual tours of the exhibition, guided by curator Megan Fontanella

Fundación BBVA

Gallery 305–306

Beginnings: Munich

Cosmic Realms: Russia to the Bauhaus

Miniscule Worlds: Paris

As a pioneer of abstraction and a renowned aesthetic theorist, Vasily Kandinsky (b. 1866, Moscow; d. 1944, Neuilly-sur-Seine, France) is among the foremost artistic innovators of the early twentieth century. In his endeavor to free painting from its ties to the natural world, Kandinsky discovered a new subject matter based solely on the artist’s “inner necessity” that would remain his lifelong concern.
In Munich in the 1900s and early 1910s, Kandinsky began exploring the expressive possibilities of color and composition, but he was abruptly forced to leave Germany with the outbreak of World War I, in 1914. The artist eventually returned to his native Moscow, and there his pictorial vocabulary started to reflect the utopian experiments of the Russian avant-garde, who emphasized geometric shapes in an effort to establish a universal aesthetic language. Kandinsky subsequently joined the faculty of the Bauhaus, a German school of art and applied design that shared his belief in art’s ability to transform self and society. Compelled to abandon Germany again when the Bauhaus closed under Nazi pressure in 1933, he settled outside Paris, where Surrealism and the natural sciences influenced Kandinsky’s biomorphic imagery.
More so than any other artist, Kandinsky is intertwined with the history of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, established in New York in 1937. Industrialist and museum founder Solomon R. Guggenheim began collecting Kandinsky’s work in 1929 and met him at the Dessau Bauhaus the following year. This exhibition draws from the foundation’s extensive holdings to illustrate the full arc of Kandinsky’s seminal career.
Curator: Megan Fontanella
Organized by The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York
Vasily Kandinsky 
Black Lines (Schwarze Linien), December 1913 (detail) 
Oil on canvas 
130.5 × 131.1 cm 
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection, By gift 37.241 
© Vasily Kandinsky, VEGAP, Bilbao 2020

Persistent State of Discovery

INNOVATIVE TEACHING

INFLUENTIAL WRITINGS

KEY TERMS

Presentation by Megan Fontanella

Introduction to the exhibition installation

Packing and shipping the works of art

Getting the galleries ready

Advertising

Shipping the works from New York to Bilbao

Moving the works of art around the Museum

Checking the condition of the works of art

Artwork layout

Catalog

Lighting

Graphic design

Didaktika

Press conference

#KandinskyCountdown

We’d like to invite you to enjoy a virtual tour of the exhibition Kandinsky. This tour includes all the works and didactic texts in the show.

START NOW

VIRTUAL TOUR

As a pioneer of abstraction and a renowned aesthetic theorist, Vasily Kandinsky (b. 1866, Moscow; d. 1944, Neuilly-sur-Seine, France) is among the

Kandinsky | Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

Lee Krasner

On Lee Krasner

A Conversation

Screening

Interviews with Lee Krasner

LK: Living Painting

Krasner's Techniques

+18 Creative Sessions

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&#8216;I was a woman, Jewish, a widow, a damn good painter, thank you, and a little too independent&#8217;. Lee Krasner

Artista

Krasner, Lee

Lee Krasner: Living Color

Enjoy the presentation of our new temporary exhibition, Lee Krasner: Living Color, and an online tour guided by its curator, Lucía Agirre.

Presentation of Lee Krasner: Living Color and online guided tour

Seguros Bilbao

Becoming Lee

Life Drawing

Little Images

War Service Windows

Stable Gallery

Prophecy

Night Journeys

Primary Series

Primary Series Drawings

Palingenesis

Eleven Ways

Lee Krasner (1908–1984) was born in Brooklyn as Lena Krassner and grew up in an Orthodox Jewish, Russian émigré family. She decided to become an artist at the age of 14, and was one of the first artists in New York to adopt an entirely abstract approach. She went on to be one of the pioneers of Abstract Expressionism. In 1942, her work was included in a group exhibition entitled French and American Painting, and the only fellow exhibitor that she had not met was Jackson Pollock, so she decided to visit his studio. From then on, they were together and in 1945 they married and moved to Springs, Long Island.
Unlike many of her contemporaries, Krasner refused to develop a “signature image,” which she considered to be “rigid rather than being alive.” Working in cycles, she continually sought out new means for authentic expression, even during the most tumultuous of times, which included Pollock's emotional volatility and his sudden death in a car crash in 1956. Krasner's formidable spirit is felt throughout the body of work that she created over more than fifty years in the studio—celebrated in this exhibition.
Exhibition organized by Barbican Centre, London in collaboration with the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. With the support of the Terra Foundation for American Art
Curators: Eleanor Nairne and Lucía Agirre
Lee Krasner 
Combat, 1965 
Oil on canvas 
179 × 410.4 cm 
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Felton Bequest, 1992 (IC1-1992) 
© The Pollock-Krasner Foundation
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IN FOCUS

Lee Krasner (1908–1984) was born in Brooklyn as Lena Krassner and grew up in an Orthodox Jewish, Russian émigré family. She decided to become an artist at

Lee Krasner: Living Color | Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

12€ Adults - 6€ Senior - 6€ Students

TopARTE, an initiative of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, remains firmly committed to local cultural actors and organizations. The result of this fruitful collaboration is a multidisciplinary program offering a wide range of content and formats, reaching all kinds of audiences.
As part of this initiative, the Museum hosts activities from a variety of fields, including architecture, film, dance, design, gastronomy, music, performance art, and theater.