The exhibition, which has already toured around various Spanish and Latin American museums, can be seen in Duisburg until the 26th of September
After its presentation in Brussels, the collection entitled \"Cubism and its context in the Telefónica Collections\" is being exhibited at the Lehmbruck Museum in Duisburg, Germany, as part of the 2010 European Capital of Culture in the Ruhr region.
The exhibition, which has toured around various Spanish and Latin American museums, can be seen in Duisburg until the 26th of September. On this occasion and for the first time, the 44 works making up the exhibition, which include works by Juan Gris, Albert Gleizes, Jean Metzinger, André Lhote, María Blanchard, Joaquín Torres-García and Rafael Barradas, among other artists, are being shown together with works from another collection - a selection of 10 Cubist sculptures from the Lehmbruck Museum collection of artists such as Picasso, Julio González, Gargallo, Lipchitz, Laurens and Archipenko.
The exhibition \"Cubism and its context\" uses the work of Juan Gris as a starting point. While this artist was still relatively unknown, Telefónica collected his work and revealed him as one of the great masters of the Modernist movement. Going further than the work done by Picasso and Braque, it was through the work of Gris that Cubism was redefined, becoming a more diverse, lasting and complex movement than is usually thought.
The exhibition \"Cubism and its context\" has been conceived using the work of Gris as its basis and proposes a reappraisal of the artist’s relationship with three different parameters: the so-called Cubist school, the importance of Cubism in Latin American modernism and, thirdly, the capacity of Cubism to extend and develop itself as a starting point for other tendencies and options in the Modernist movement.
Together with the style of Cubism that is considered essential, there was another type: the Cubism of Juan Gris and of those who called themselves Cubists. This other Cubism asserted the plastic possibilities of colour, always focused on the qualities and suggestiveness of forms and, despite its eventual convergence with pure painting, also considered at all times that this new art form needed to convey figurative content. This other Cubism is the one which, using the initial group of works by Juan Gris as a starting point, is presented in the exhibition \"Cubism and its context\".
Among the pieces on display we can see works which are firmly ensconced in the canons of the Cubist school together with pieces which show the relationship shared by Cubist language with that of Futurism, modern classicism, geometric abstraction and the new figurative painting or Surrealism, and we can even find works which project signs of the cultural identity of the artists who created them.
Within this exhibition, Cubist work can offer its own inimitable poetry or act as a reference point, although it can also resonate deeply or set itself up as an effective starting point for other possibilities in the plastic arts. In all the works on show, however, Cubism always presents itself as a creative endeavour which overcomes the passing of time, geography and intercontinental distances.
