La Colección

La Colección, an exhibition featuring 31 works from the Barrié Foundation's contemporary painting collection, can be visited through April 26th. Curated by José Enrique Fernández Varela, director and conservationist for Patrimony and Culture at the Barrié Foundation, La Colección seeks to answer the question: What do we talk about when we talk about painting, today? It contextualizes today's pictorial production with a selection of works by Adrian Schiess, Ángela de la Cruz, Jean-Marc Bustamante, Carlos Irijalba, Curro González, Fabián Marcaccio, Fiona Rae, Frank Nitsche, Gil Heitor Cortesão, Günther Forg, Helmut Dorner, Herbert Brandl, Ignasi Aballí, Imi Knoebel, Jessica Stockholder, João Penalva, Jonathan Lasker, José Pedro Croft, Katharina Grosse, Manuel Vilariño, Negro Álvaro, Otto Zitko , Paulo Climachauska, Pedro Barbeito, Perejaume, Sandra Cinto, Shinique Smith, Simeón Saiz Ruiz, Teo Soriano, Tobias Lehner and Peter Zimmerman. All the works belong to the Barrié Foundation's collection, born in the 1970s, a time of dissent and hybridization in artistic disciplines: painting, sculpture, installation, and their interaction with exhibition spaces. The exhibition is complemented by a program of free didactic visits for school groups; activities focused on the knowledge, understanding, discussion, and perception of contemporary art over the past 30 years; and the publication of a catalogue raisonné with texts by art critic David Barro and a conversation between Barro and María de Corral, who has directed acquisition programs for institutions such as La Caixa Foundation, the Museo Reina Sofía, and the Telefónica Foundation, among others. The Barrié Foundation's contemporary painting collection is an example of artistic patronage, and of contributions to the conservation and promotion of art. Since 2008, this collection has acquired some of its items at fairs such as ARCOmadrid, Basel, and Lisbon, and is comprised of works by key artists of the second half of the Twentieth Century. They include established and emerging names in contemporary Spanish and international painting, with a presence in international collections, such as Imi Knoebel, Ángela de la Cruz, Helmut Dorner, Fiona Rae, Jan Marc Bustamante, Jose Pedro Croft, Jessica Stockholder, Manolo Vilariño, Katharina Grosse, among others artists who approach painting from the vantage of photography, installation, or sculpture, playing with the expansion and reincarnation of painting in other media.