Temporary Exhibition

The Illusion of the American Frontier

For the first time in Spain, the exhibition The Illusion of the American Frontier will follow the footsteps of the 19th-century artists who first explored the American West in order to depict its landscapes and the life of its indigenous peoples. These artists gave visual form to the myth of a wild, dangerous but still virgin territory of astonishing natural grandeur.

Opening with a section on the Spanish explorers who established the first contacts with the land and tribes to the west of the Mississippi, the exhibition will follow the fascinating artistic adventures of Karl Bodmer, George Catlin and Edward Curtis, who documented, customs, rituals and appearances with a mixture of precision and ethnographic licence and of landscape painters such as Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Hill who approached their depictions of the “promised land” with dramatic intent.

The exhibition’s curator, artist Miguel Ángel Blanco, will present a group of Book-boxes from his Library of the Forest, made with materials from the American West.