Temporary Exhibitions
The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao offers a dynamic program of temporary modern and contemporary art exhibitions that deepen our understanding of art today and give an overview of the international scene in art history.
Helen Frankenthaler: Painting Without Rules
04.11.2025–09.28.2025
Helen Frankenthaler: Painting Without Rules, in gallery 105, is an exhibition focusing on one of the leading figures of American abstract art in the twentieth century: Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011). Structured to mirror the stages in her life and artistic career, the exhibition shows how Frankenthaler’s free, boundless creativity opened up new avenues for abstract painting.
The exhibition begins in the 1950s, when the young artist, inspired by Jackson Pollock, popularized a new painting technique: soak-stain, which involves pouring thinned-down paint onto a flat, unprimed canvas, allowing the paint to soak into the fabric and create soft, fluid washes of color. In the 1960s, her paintings become clearer and more structured, as shown in the big canvas where color seems to float at its own pace. In the 1970s and 1980s, her work becomes more lyrical and atmospheric, her landscapes – like Eastern Light (1982) – capturing light, calm, and the ocean.
The exhibition also follows her personal and creative ties with other artists, including Mark Rothko, Robert Motherwell, David Smith, and Anthony Caro, whose works are shown as well. Frankenthaler shared ideas, friendship, and admiration with them all. In her final years, Frankenthaler’s works on paper became more essential and intimate, as a response to her creative principle: painting without rules.
Helen Frankenthaler
Star Gazing, 1989
Acrylic on canvas
181.6 x 365.8 cm
Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, New York
© 2025 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VEGAP
Photo: Tim Pyle, courtesy Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, New York
Itineraries: in situ: Refik Anadol
Living Architecture: Gehry
March 7–October 19, 2025
The exhibition in gallery 208 marks the launch of in situ, a new series of site-specific installations that push the boundaries of contemporary practices in dialog with the Museum’s architecture.
in situ: Refik Anadol presents Living Architecture: Gehry (2025), a groundbreaking audiovisual installation by Turkish-American media artist Refik Anadol, a pioneer in the aesthetics of data visualization and AI art. Anadol reimagines Frank Gehry’s architectural legacy in a unique immersive experience in which the latter’s designs are reinterpreted and reimagined with the help of AI.
Using a custom-built AI model developed by Refik Anadol Studio that feeds on a vast archive of ethically sourced, open-access imagery, sketches, and blueprints, Anadol explores machines’ ability to “dream”, transforming Gehry’s architectural language into ever-changing landscapes with stunning abstract configurations. Living Architecture: Gehry unfolds across six interconnected chapters, surrounding visitors within the walls of the vast gallery 208, challenging their perceptions, and encouraging them to think about the impact of AI on the future of creativity and the way in which we understand the world through technology.
In the Didaktika educational area in gallery 204, we will find audio and video resources that will help you understand the creative process behind Refik Anadol and his multidisciplinary team’s works.
Render for exhibition at Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, 2024
© Refik Anadol, Bilbao 2025
Vito Acconci / Sergio Prego: YOU
04.03.2025 – 09.07.2025
The Film & Video gallery, dedicated to video art and motion pictures, is currently housing the result of the convergence of Vito Acconci (New York, 1940–2017) and Sergio Prego (Donostia-San Sebastián, 1969), who met at Acconci Studio in New York, became friends, and worked together between 1996 and 2002.
Although they belonged to different generations, Acconci and Prego shared the idea that body action not only takes place in space but transforms space too. While the former was interested in everyday gestures, the latter focused on how sculpture interventions changed the spaces where they were set.
This itinerary begins in the hall of gallery 103, where Acconci’s sound piece Running Tape (1969) enters into a dialogue with several of Prego’s single-channel videos. The main gallery has been transformed into an immersive space thanks to a site-specific design by Prego. Visitors are encouraged to wander about, in an intertwining of architecture, image, and action where Acconci’s works are screened on the unusual surfaces of the installation.
Sergio Prego
Bisecting Line, 2008 (frame). Video, color, no sound, 3 min. 14 sec. Courtesy of the artist.
