Painterly Abstraction, 1949-1969: Selections from the Guggenheim Collections

The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao will present until January 8, 2012 the exhibition entitled Painterly Abstraction, 1949-1969: Selections from the Guggenheim Collections. The show analyzes central artistic trends in US and European art through a survey that expands two decades. The exhibition includes works created by the most important US and European abstract artists during these two decades and explores the similarities among several artistic manifestations through eighty artworks from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Collection, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao Collection. Through the eighty artworks created by seventy artists, Painterly Abstraction, 1949-1969 conveys similarities between artists whose works were created in different continents during a transitional period that saw great creative developments. Curated by Tracey Bashkoff and Megan Fontanella, the exhibition is complemented with a series of educational spaces designed to expose visitors to a selection of the political, social, literary, musical, and cinematographic milestones that occurred during the 1950s and 1960s. Music, writings, images, and audiovisuals, from the then emerging public television, transport us to a recent past that we have been invited to observe from the "open window" that is this exhibition. The show also includes news material about the Cuban Revolution, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the active struggle for civil rights led by Martin Luther King in the US, among other themes.