Curated by Guillermo Solana, the exhibition The Occult in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collections, on display in the Temporary Exhibition Hall (ground floor) of the Museum until 24 September, brings together fifty-nine works of art from the Thyssen-Bornemisza collections (including both the museum’s permanent collection and the private collections of various members of the Thyssen-Bornemisza family) in which traces of the occult have been detected and can be documented.
The esoteric tradition offers a series of codes for deciphering hidden meanings. Its value consists in revealing to the viewer details and aspects of the works of art that have gone unnoticed and proposing new heterodox readings.
Alchemy, astrology, demonology, spiritualism, theosophy, shamanism… the occult sciences, excluded or persecuted for centuries, found in the visual arts the ideal terrain for transmitting their coded messages.
Occult knowledge has survived for centuries in a hostile cultural environment – dominated first by hegemonic religion and then by rationalism and positivism – thanks to its capacity for camouflage and infiltration. And it is in the visual arts that esoteric ideas and beliefs have found the ideal terrain for their coded messages: from the hermetic allegories of the Renaissance to the manifestations of 20th century avant-garde art.
