Until 16 March 2025 in rooms C and D of the Jerónimos building, the Museo del Prado and the Fundación Amigos Museo del Prado, in collaboration with the City of Madrid, present the first individual exhibition of the German artist Sigmar Polke in Madrid.
Sigmar Polke. Afinidades desveladas offers the opportunity to get to know the work of one of the most influential artists in contemporary European art, and to discover his fascinating dialogue with the Spanish pictorial tradition, represented at its best by Francisco de Goya. Two artists separated for almost two centuries, but connected by their disruptive and visionary approach.
This exhibition, curated by Gloria Moure, brings together more than forty pieces of the German artist -among paintings, photographs and drawings- along with the magnificent painting Las viejas or El Tiempo (1810-12) of Goya belonging to the Museum of Lille and which is presented for the first time in Spain together with his radiography, an image that unveils compositions that attracted Polke in a special way This discovery encouraged him to experiment with new artistic pursuits and was a source of inspiration to delve into his own interests.
The journey through the exhibition unites the legacies of two great masters, creating a dialogue between Polke’s formal experimentation and the symbolic load of Goya’s work.
Goya’s influence on and complicity with Polke covers three areas: on the one hand, the character and his artistic, political and social circumstances; on the other, the objectual and anthropomorphic iconography that appears in both Las viejas and her radiograph, and finally the concrete invoice of the painting.
