Edited by Gloria Moure, art historian and curator of the exhibition.
Spanish, with texts translated to English. Hardcover. 22 x 27 cm. 204 pages.
Catalogue published on the occasion of the exhibition Sigmar Polke. Affinities Revealed, held at the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, from 26 November 2024 to 16 March 2025.
The relationship between the German artist Sigmar Polke, considered one of the most influential post-war artists in Europe, and Francisco de Goya (1746-1828) serves as the background to this exhibition and the accompanying catalogue. The fifty or so works on display reveal a heterogeneous set of parallels between the two artists, a timeless connection between their themes and their workmanship. Since Polke's encounter in 1982 with the Aragonese master's painting The Old Women or Time at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille, the consequences on his work have been swift, affecting motifs as well as technique and compositional criteria.
In the X-ray analysis of The Old Women, Polke discovered much more than his intuition had led him to look for, and this unveiling of what was hidden reaffirmed his vision of painting as a succession of layers in which time and memory are sedimented. Like Goya, Polke challenged the conventions of his time through a critical and ironic gaze, but he was also attentive to the eternal questions surrounding the creative act.
Edited by Gloria Moure, art historian and curator of the exhibition. With texts by Gloria Moure, Sophia Stang (Director General and Scientific Director of the Anna Polke-Stiftung) and Francesco Guzzetti (Senior Researcher at the Università degli Studi in Florence).
ISBN: 978-84-8480-629-5
