Hot paintings, cool palace...

The Abelló Collection takes Malaga by storm with 62 historical, modern and contemporary masterpieces

Georgina Olver

Malaga

Friday, 2 August 2024, 13:39

'Loved it... I've seen it several times, with my parents and other visitors from abroad" - Such is a typical reaction to the exceptional ... exhibition presented until 18 August at the Palacio Episcopal, conveniently situated right next to another of Malaga's architectural hotspots: the city's celebrated single-towered cathedral.

The show's big-name line-up - From Raphael to Bacon - suggests a blockbuster with tourists queueing around the building in sweltering heat. However, an unexpectedly intimate experience awaits art lovers with a taste for curatorial exploits.

All in all, 62 historical, modern and contemporary masterpieces grace the walls of a succession of spaces within a space, on the first floor of this former bishop's palace, now housing the Unicaja Foundation's cultural centre.

The whimsical spirit of the spectacular 500-work Abelló Collection, which Spanish entrepreneur Juan Abelló and his wife Ana Isabel Gamazo y Hohenlohe-Langenburg have constituted over the years - creating quirky non-chronological artistic juxtapositions, in their richly upholstered if distinctly 'lived-in' surroundings... keeps the onlooker entertained from start to finish.

Curatorial symphony

The curator, Conchita Romero, deserves a standing ovation for composing what amounts to a symphonic museography. The brisk and lively introductory section sets the tone. Under the spell of El Greco's Saint Francis, we are introduced to two forms of light: first, inner brightness (Rothko's hazy mysticism flanked by a couple of traditional Madonna and Child depictions); next, the glow which certain works of art project: a chiefly yellow and copper-hued abstract canvas by Gerhard Richter accentuates this aspect of two classical religious pictures.

To pursue the symphony analogy, the second "movement" (Paul Cézanne, Georges Braque, Juan Gris & Co.) spotlights multisensory still-lifes. In this category, my Gold Medal goes to a non-household name master, the son of a cobbler: José de Ribera aka "Lo Spagnoletto" (Valencia, 1591 - Naples, 1652) for an oil on canvas featuring a smiling wrinkled old fellow smelling an onion - not exactly a still-life, yet this ode to The Sense of Smell is totally in tune with Bonnard's assertion that "Life is full of beauty that we often overlook".

From one visual treat to the next... From Botero to Barceló... From Goya to Gauguin... From Picasso to Dalí... From Tàpies to Sorolla... The beat goes on all the way through to the final From Raphael to Bacon crescendo.

In that last "R&B" room, a riveting dual faceted double portrait by Amedeo Modigliani (with a cello player on the front and fellow artist Constantin Brancusi on the back) steals the show, and what a show (!!): cool both as in "The Place" to cool off from the Costa's sizzling temperatures, and... as in "see it as many times as you like", be it scanning each and every QR code, with a guide, or simply going with the flow - pausing to take a second look at whatever curatorial whimsy takes your fancy.

Este contenido es exclusivo para suscriptores

Top 50

Esta funcionalidad es exclusiva para registrados.

Reporta un error en esta noticia