Museo Thyssen celebrates its 20th anniversary with the series 'Overlappig gazes'

To coincide with the celebration of its 20th anniversary, the Museo Thyssen- Bornemisza launches a new exhibition programme with the general title of Overlapping gazes, in which special installations of works from its own collections will be presented on a regular basis.

Coinciding with ARCO 2012, for which the invited country is the Netherlands, the first exhibition in this series is entitled Mondrian, De Stijl and the Dutch artistic Tradition. It comprises a visual dialogue between works by Piet Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg and Bart van der Leck, his fellow artists of the De Stijl Neo-plasticist group, and a selection of Dutch Golden Age paintings from the Museum's own collections.

This juxtaposition will allow for an appreciation of the fact that despite the distance of centuries there is a conceptual relationship between the art of the De Stijl members and 17thcentury Dutch painting. Both are characterised by a balanced and harmonious resolution of the pictorial composition and by a tendency to approach the pictorial surface as a frontal, two-dimensional plane that is organized geometrically.

The Museo Thyssen- Bornemisza is the only Spanish museum to possess a group of works by Piet Mondrian and the Dutch Neo-plasticist group.  The challenging nature of their paintings and the interplay of planes and lines on the pictorial surface did not in fact imply such a radical break with tradition. By relating them to works by 17th century Dutch artists in this new installation, they will undoubtedly take on new meaning for the spectator.

Date: until May 6.
Location: Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. Paseo del Prado 8, 28014 Madrid. Spain.
Opening hours: from Tuesday to Sunday from 10am to 7pm. Saturdays from 10am to 11pm.