Until May 31, the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza presents the first major retrospective in Spain dedicated to Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864-1916).
Through ninety oils and drawings by the artist and some of his contemporaries, it offers a complete view of the work of this painter who created little more than 400 pieces in his 51 years of life. Considered one of the most prominent Danish artists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, after the irruption and consolidation of avant-garde movements, he gradually fell into oblivion. Since the 1980s, several exhibitions inside and outside of Denmark have brought it closer to an audience that, in Spain, had only been able to see it on rare occasions.
The ambiguity of his paintings keeps open multiple avenues of interpretation that in recent decades have been enriched by the search for connections with other European artists and the contextualization with their Danish contemporaries. Seeing his paintings in the context of the collections of the Thyssen Museum makes it possible to relate them with those of other masters of the past, such as the Dutch of the 17th century and the great figures of the 19th and 20th centuries. The subtitle of the exhibition, “the listening eye,” refers to the metaphorical relationship between his painting, silence, the apparent calm it conveys, and the artist’s interest in music.
