“Man is the measure of all things, of those that are insofar as they are, of those that are not insofar as they are not,” the Greek sophist Protagoras forcefully stated. Today we would say with more justice that the human being is the one who configures that measurement. The point is that when we enter an era that, according to apocalyptics, is increasingly dehumanized - and there are undoubtedly good reasons to believe this, this very week in the Middle East dehumanization has reached indescribable degrees -; When others fear that the algorithm will supplant the intervention of the person, art returns its most tangible presence to us.
The most anticipated exhibition that can be seen right now in Barcelona is the Antonio López retrospective at La Pedrera; I suggest you don't miss it. Tomelloso's teacher is great because his impeccable technical mastery has put him at the service of a very refined humanist vision. He has thoroughly studied classical Greek and Roman art and the conceptions that supported it. “Artistic beauty is the radiance of truth; also the reflection of the inner beauty that some human beings have. And on the other hand, in the man of our time there is a tension that distances him from what is beautiful: this is what happens with Giacometti and Bacon, they are good, they are true, but they do not create beauty,” he confessed to me a few years ago.
In the exhibition, his vision of the human - warmth, modesty, simplicity, love of the tangible - is reflected in the famous sculptures “Man and Woman”, in a variety of portraits and other sculptural pieces, in his approach to everyday family life. in two panels that collect different scenes of the domestic routine and in the small-format recreation of a lunch, which are seen for the first time in Barcelona and which López highlighted to us with special pride at the inauguration.
A great point for Fundación Catalunya La Pedrera, which within a year and a half will have welcomed three of the greatest creators of current Spanish art: Jaume Plensa in April-July, now Antonio López and, in 2024, the ceramics of Miquel Barceló . They are also three titans of figure and figuration.
Another essential event is offered by CaixaForum until October 22: “The human image: art, identities and symbolism” analyzes “how the human being has represented and represents himself.”
Organized together with the British Museum and curated by Brendan Moore, it is one of those high-voltage historical proposals that span many centuries, from ancient civilizations (there is a human skull that is 8,000 years old) to Dürer, Van Dyck, Matisse, Manet or Hockney, articulated in areas dedicated to Ideal Beauty, The Divine Body, The political body and Corporal Transformation.
A third boarding will be offered by the MNAC starting October 26. “What humanity? The human figure after the war (1940-1966)”, open until January 11, will bring together works by Miró, Saura, Oteiza, Guayasamín, Leon Golub, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, Zoran Music, Henry Moore and Germaine Richier.
The intention of curator Alex Mitrani is to capture a time in which figuration “took on the challenge of representing the body and the face, creating the image of a wounded, anguished, destroyed but also reinvented and germinal humanity”, in tune with “the disintegration of classical humanism or the construction of a new subjectivity through pain and hope.”
Two guided tours in November will relate the work of Antonio López included in this exhibition with that exhibited in La Pedrera.
Contemporary art has often projected its batteries against formal virtuosity and against the pictorial representation of the human figure. But they remain unscathed. Three exhibitions invite us to delve into the enigma of the human figure and its representations, to look at ourselves in the mirror and remember that, in times of anti-humanism, art can give us back the sense of humanity.
And they will probably be among the most visited of the year.
