Dalí and Surrealism in the ABANCA Art Collection

The museum presents a selection of thirteen works related to Surrealism from the ABANCA Art Collection. The show spans the period from 1923 to 1976 and features works by Dalí, Max Ernst, Miró, Maruja Mallo and Matta, among others. It begins with a picture by Giorgio de Chirico, a forerunner of the movement, and an oil painting by Max Ernst inspired by the Italian’s metaphysical landscapes. It continues in the 1930s, when Miró adopted a more radical pictorial language and fewer expressive devices until arriving at his more characteristic mature style, which is also represented in the exhibition by a canvas executed in 1976. A lithograph by Maruja Mallo on popular children’s games, two spectacular dream landscapes by Dalí and two works by the Tenerife-born Óscar Domínguez complete the decade. The show ends with a selection of pieces executed after the Second World War in which Matta, Wilfredo Lam and Eugenio Granell attempt to lay the foundations for a modern mythology.

The ABANCA Art Collection previously visited the museum in 2015 for an exhibition on Picasso and Cubism. Begun in the mid-1990s with the aim of preserving and disseminating the work of Galician artists, the collection has progressively grown through the purchase of Spanish and international pieces and currently numbers more than 1,300 works by some 200 artists, including renowned names such as Picasso, Braque, Léger, Miró, Dalí, Kandinsky, Tàpies, Chillida and Barceló.