The fascination with the forms of nature is as old as art. In this era, in which, under the yoke of multiple crises - climatic, ecological and territorial -, nature, as we know it, is in danger of disappearing, the need to reconsider our links with the world that surrounds us is imposed. surrounds and on which we depend. For this reason, an exhibition reflects on the past and present of the relationship between art and nature, between culture and science, while also reflecting concern about current environmental challenges.
It does so through the works of great modern artists, such as Picasso, Kandinsky, Miró, Le Corbusier, Raoul Hausmann, Jean Arp, Paul Klee, Georgia O'Keeffe or Alvar Aalto, in dialogue with others belonging to the last decades. , who have contributed new committed points of view, such as Pamela Rosenkranz, Jeremy Deller or Neri Oxman.
Until January 14, 2024, CaixaForum Barcelona hosts the international premiere of “Art and Nature”, an exhibition that presents more than eighty pieces from the collection of the Musée National d’Art Moderne-Centre d’Art Georges Pompidou. Painting, sculpture, photography, architecture, cinema and design are the disciplines that coexist in a transversal journey through the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st around art and nature. And it is articulated in four thematic areas woven on a chronological basis: “Metamorphosis”, “Mimicry”, “Creation” and “Threat”. From the attraction for organic forms and the discovery of new microscopic forms, to creation with natural elements and the danger of an irreversible change that ends beauty and diversity.
Artists of all times have recognized the beauty and mystery, strength and harmony of life in animals and plants. During the first third of the 20th century, this fascination acquired a new meaning thanks to the development of microscopic photography techniques, which revealed a dimension of life until then invisible. Thus a fascinating aesthetic emerged based on the biology of microorganisms. Photographers, artists, architects and designers developed new ways of observing and showing nature. The leaf of a fern, a waterfall or the seabed were presented in almost abstract compositions as pure forms, closer to the idea than to the matter.
Already in the second half of the 20th century, plants, forests and landscapes began to form part of the work and movements such as Italian arte povera or American land art emerged, which played with natural elements and offered a set of forms and visions of nature that is an inexhaustible spectacle. In recent years, new scientific technologies and biotechnology have burst into artistic creation with biomaterials or organic matter, with natural processes to create conceptual works of art that evolve like living organisms. They are works in which environmental problems and the need to preserve our environment resonate.
A bronze sculpture by Henri Laurens, Métamorphose, from 1940, welcomes visitors. Julio González is another of the great sculptors present in the exhibition. In Cactus II, from 1939; The categories of the natural and the cultural, the material and the spiritual are erased. Works by Yves Tanguy and Max Ernst from the 1940s and 1950s are combined with a film by New Zealand director Len Lye, Tusalava, from 1929, which shows a play of organic forms.
The exhibition pays attention to the contributions of women artists, such as Georgia O'Keeffe, featuring a 1924 painting, Red, yellow and black streak. To finish with some enigmatic works: Ubu IV, a painting by Le Corbusier from 1940, which is inspired by the character of Alfred Jarry; Yves Tanguy's Jour de lenteur [Day of Slowness], from 1937, which explores the interior landscape; or Les trois cyprès [The three cypresses], from 1951, a painting by Max Ernst in which visitors will once again find the anthropomorphic form: the human being transformed into an impossible tree.
It is the turn of artists' fascination with natural forms, which leads them to incorporate them into their works. Although, sometimes the structure, form and principles that govern the movement of animals and plants are imitated, as in Alexander Calder's work Four Leaves and Three Petals, from 1939, in which The shapes the artist creates move like the elements of the real world. The exhibition shows two pieces by architect Alvar Aalto: the Paimio 41 chair, from 1930, and Flowers, from 1940, which take as a reference the simplicity and beauty of the plant world.
Design plays an important role in this area. Patrick Jouin created a flower-shaped lamp in 2010, while Ross Lovegrove designed a table in 2007 inspired by the shape of the leaves of the ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba), a tree attributed with medicinal and spiritual qualities. A final section is dedicated to the geological world with a work by Alberto Magnelli about stones and earth, and another by Jean Dubuffet from 1961 that recreates the texture of the earth. Photographer Paul Nash also portrays boulders and stone walls. Finally, a work by Simone Forti: two films from 1974, one with two large caged gray bears and another in which Forti is inspired by the movements of those same bears to create choreography.
Here Paul Klee's work Pflanzenwachstum [Plant Growth], from 1921, illustrates through an abstract composition the process of organic growth that plants and animals share with art. Another work by Frantisek Kupka from 1919-1923 shows the growth of pistils and stamens: the creation from the organic shapes of flowers.
After this prologue, the exhibition introduces us to the modern world of the sixties and seventies, which explores new aspects of the relationship between nature and art. Robert Smithson's 1970 film Spiral Jetty conveys the idea of the continuous genesis of forms in nature. In Le penne di Esopo [Aesop's Pens], a work from 1968, Pino Pascali introduces the tactile dimension with a work that raises the relationship between writing (culture) and the animal world (the materiality of the pen).
The Israeli artist Neri Oxman creates her work from organic networks and cellular structures. In Medusa 1 (2012) she creates a form that can be the animal jellyfish or the mythological figure: monster and amulet. In her models, Alisa Andrasek works with bionic materials that are produced from biological materials treated with digital tools to create architectural forms inspired by the organic world.
The fourth and final section, shorter than the previous ones, expresses the fear of the effect of human activity on nature, which is at risk. It is now that the exhibition delves into the environmental field. Skin Pool (Gleen), by Swiss artist Pamela Rosenkranz, is a work made in 2019 using organic matter: a stainless steel bowl with an apparently toxic, pink liquid reminiscent of skin tone. supposedly white, as idealized in advertising.
Each of the four sections that make up the exhibition also offers small collections with works grouped by theme. Like, for example, the transfiguration of the human body in flower, belonging to “Mefamorfosis”, which shows the sculpture Femme fleur [Flower Woman], from 1942, by Laurens and the painting Le chapeau à fleurs [The Flower Hat], by 1940, by Picasso. The “Mimicry” section corresponds to three major works by Kandinsky, from his period in Paris in the 1930s.
The “Creation” block includes some works of Italian Arte Povera, which incorporates elements of nature with a conceptual approach. This is the case of Albero [Tree] by Giuseppe Penone, from 1973, which reveals the tree hidden in the industrial wooden beams. The exhibition ends with a three-dimensional audiovisual installation, within the “Menace” block, by the English artist Jeremy Deller: Exodus, from 2012. It consists of two video projectors that allow us to see bats hibernating and reproducing in a cave; In the end, they leave the cave and fly away. Deller's work reflects the fear we have today of a new virus, based on the idea that COVID-19 was originally transmitted by bats.
In each space of “Art and Nature” a dialogue is established that allows multiple connections. This is a multidisciplinary exhibition that takes the Center Pompidou's own collections as a model. In a presentation that renounces didactic categorization or chronology, visitors will enter the universe of nature, which, in the digital age, seems to be the last example of purity and truth.
Since the seventies, culture and science have occupied an important place in the programming of the ”la Caixa” Foundation, for whom the vocation of working for personal development and social cohesion through cultural and scientific programs constitutes its driving force. progress. Because the entity believes in the capacity for innovation, in talent, in emotion, in knowledge, in science and in art. That is why it offers society a gateway to knowledge through programming that deals with current and timeless issues, seeking to establish connections between major scientific and cultural issues.
The ”la Caixa” Foundation believes that culture and science should play a central role in people's lives and in society, that they should be a tool of knowledge and transformation that allows us to face the great social and environmental challenges of today. the next years. To achieve this, it provides new perspectives, analyzes the past, connects with the present and builds the future through exhibitions, activities and calls. It makes culture and science more accessible and contributes to social cohesion. The entity also collaborates with cultural and scientific institutions, artists and mediators, and is present throughout Spain with its CaixaForum centers and the CosmoCaixa Science Museum, spread throughout Spain. In addition, it reaches out to the entire territory, organizing dozens of exhibitions and activities throughout Spain and also in Portugal, available in different mobile formats, such as foldable units, street art or mixed formats.
