LLEI D'ART 10

Riotous Baroque: From Cattelan to Zurbarán Tributes to Precarious Vitality Guggenheim Bilbao From 14th June to 6th October 2013 Comissioned by Bice Curiger, the first woman in 116 years to hold the post of director of the prestigious Venice Biennale in its last edition, this exposition, or- ganised by the Kunsthaus Zürich and the Guggenheim Bilbao, covers both contemporary art and 17th century painting. The aim of this confrontation is to suggest different readings and interpretations of Baroque, a style whose value was not accepted until the end of the 19th century and was brought to life by historians such as the Swiss Jacob Burckhardt, the historian Benedetto Croce and, more recently, the Catalan writer Eugeni d’Ors and German essayist Erwin Panofsky. As such, the display is not focussed on Baroque as a profusion of pomp, ornamentation and gold, but rather as a manifestation of a precarious vitality; one which is exalted, recognised or lost, projected and threatened by death. From the viewpoint of the pre- sent, the exhibition turns its gaze to history, rusticism, vulgarity, religiousness and sensuality, as well as to the grotesque, comic and virility: a range of topics which ground the works that make up the exhibition. Given this, the point of the exhibition is not to combine motifs, themes or formal analogies for the sake of il- lustration, but rather to try to compare techniques. Moreover, the exposition, which brings together works both by the great artists of the 17th century, like Fran- Adriaen Brouwer. La fiesta de los granjeros /Farmer’s feast , c. 1626. Kunsthaus Zürich, Ruzicka Stiftung, 1949 Simon Vouet. El rapto de Europa/ The Rape of Europe , c. 1640. © Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid 14