We start the new year with more art enveloping cities, palaces and museums. This 2023 is set to give a strong boost to the art that stopped two years ago, and which has been gradually re-establishing itself;
January 2023 starts off strong with the 7 art highlights, beginning with the 87th International Green Week in Berlin. With ecology and sustainability being essential. The Italian city of Milan hosts a magical exhibition at the Museo del Globo, while the Fondation Cartier returns to school through the artist Fabrice Hyber. On the other hand, Barcelona welcomes Joaquín Sorolla at the Palau Martorell, paying tribute to his centenary, and the Museo MOCO welcomes Kehinde Wiley, a new artist in its exhibitions. Finally, the Museo Thyssen shows the art of Ukraine through In the Eye of the Hurricane. Avant-garde in Ukraine, 1900-1930. And the Matadero Madrid envelops visitors in the metaverse.
Berlin starts 2023 painted green
The city of Berlin will be dressed in green to welcome the 87th edition of the International Green Week 2023, after two years without a trade fair. Under the motto A taste of the future, as every year, the main objective will be to show visitors a wide range of products from food, agriculture and horticulture. Conservation and environmental well-being is essential right now, and during the exhibition days there will be talk of climate protection, resource conservation and the circular economy.
The fair is divided into 9 different sections, allowing visitors to discover local and international elements that they did not know and want to experience. Within the German section, cultural elements will surround visitors through typical music as well as traditional cuisine made from natural foods. Meanwhile, the organic farming associations will show relevant information on how to act with social awareness, not only when it comes to harvesting and production, but also when it comes to recycling and reuse within the household.
Where? Messe Berlin GmbH, Messedamm 22, Berlín
When? From 20 to 29 January 2023
Timetable: From 10.00h to 18.00h. Friday 27 January from 10.00h to 20.00h
Tickets: You can buy the tickets here .
Metaverses: Between fact and fiction
Virtual environments take over our physical realities, and the term metaverse is once again present in the Matadero Madrid Matadero Madrid. The exhibition Metaverses: realities in transitionpresents five metaverses and an installation that begins with The Subject Changes. Travelling through the constantly evolving character, visitors discover virtual landscapes inhabited by works of art, as well as hear the sound of many artists creating music. On the other hand, the club culture with projects by Tivoli Cloud VR and the Club Matryoshka.
The author Neal Stephenson used this term and the concept of combining physical reality and virtual reality in his novel Snow Crash in 1992. Imagining that dystopian future where a huge network is interconnected and controlled. And within that metaverse, the avatar himself. But the metaverse is only just beginning to be known, with the possibility of creating and deciphering much more than what is currently there. For this reason, the exhibition was conceived with the aim of broadening visitors’ knowledge of the creative potential they have;
Where? Plaza de Legazpi, 8, Madrid
When? 22 September to 29 January 2023
Hours: Until 5 January from Friday to Thursday from 12.00h to 21.00h. Tuesday to Thursday from 17.00h to 21.00h. Friday, Saturday Sunday from 12.00h to 21.00h.
Immersed in the art of ballooning
The Italian city of Milan closes the year with the new exhibition Pop Air at Balloon Museum. Eighteen artists invite visitors into a dynamic installation where enormous balloon shapes play with them. After his exhibitions in Rome and Paris, he arrives in Italy to reflect on the new expressions in art. And throughout the tour, the visitor has the opportunity to feel the journey in a unique way, capturing the colours, lights and senses in a personal way. Throughout the tour there are diverse installations and sections into which Pop Air is divided.
Large balloons cover the sky and earth inside the Balloon Museum, playing with lights and textures, allowing the characterisation of each created world to take over.
Thelights and music converse with each other as we observe out-of-scale forms such as the sleeping giant by the sculptor Max Streicher. The everyday objects have their presence with the big red pillows by Geraldo Zamproni, or discover the balance between chaos and tranquillity with A Quiet Storm. The latter immerses visitors in a sea, sky and rain that are captured in a different way. In addition, the connection between theperson and the brain, the mysterious characters and geometry are further elements within each section. The exhibition features a great deal of sustainable care, using balloons with 100% natural and biodegradable rubber latex.
Where? Via Tortona, 27, Milan, Italy
When? 23 December 2022 to 12 February 2023
Hours: Monday to Thursday from 10.00h to 21.00h. Friday from 10.00h to 23.00h. Saturday from 09.00h to 23.00h. Sunday from 09.00h to 21.00h.
Tickets: You can buy the tickets here
Joaquín Sorolla allows us to rediscover the Palau Martorell
Under the ten neoclassical columns that support the three floors of the Palau MartorellPalau Martorellthe new exhibition Sorolla. Hunting Impressions arrives in Barcelona after travelling to Bilbao and Valencia. With the arrival of the new 2023, this exhibition embarks on homage to the centenary of the death of Joaquín Sorolla by exhibiting 193 small-format oil paintings on cardboard, board or pieces of canvas. Small pieces that reflect his chronological evolution from his early years to his consolidation. Enrique Varela, director of the Sorolla Museum, acknowledges that these high paintings in miniature reveal great paintings, comparing them to haute cuisine in the form of dishes.
Portraits and landscapes are the scenes that envelop the walls of the palace. The oil paintings of children and women on the beach, where the Mediterranean light and the freedom of the brushstrokes predominate, are particularly noteworthy.
Fishing villages and their boats were one of the artist’s strong points. Inspired by his Mediterranean homeland
The exhibition is divided in a circular manner, starting from the first sketches to become a reference in art. Throughout the tour, visitors can observe how the small details of the brushstrokes change. His beginnings, painting in the free air, capturing the perfect light and representing it in his paintings. The everyday life being a main element in his paintings. The reference of the Mediterranean Sea and the fishing villages, being the Valencian town, Jávea, a reference for his art. Its nature with rocky areas and cliffs gave Sorolla a different kind of inspiration. He was able to play with a different kind of illumination, transferred into the illustrated colours.
Where? Carrer Ample, 11. Plaça de la Mercè, Barcelona
When? From 21 December 2022 to 5 March 2023.
Orning hours: Tuesday to Sunday from 10.00h to 20.00h
Tickets: You can buy the tickets here .
Ukraine’s avant-garde power on canvas
For months now, the situation in Ukraine has been a daily concern, and in order not to leave aside a society that is suffering, Madrid welcomes a part of its culture through the exhibition In the Eye of the Hurricane. Avant-garde in Ukraine, 1900-1930. The Thyssen Museum has brought to its walls the Ukrainian avant-garde art of the early years of the last century. Within a few years, Ukraine developed different artistic techniques within a social and political revolution. The First World War gave way to the revolutions in 1917, and their subsequent continuous clashes. Even so, art did not cease to advance, and this had to be revealed.
From left to right: Still Life, 1913, by Alexandra Exter and Simultaneous Dresses. Three women, shapes and colours, 1925 by Sonia Delaunay.
Organised chronologically, 70 works are on display featuring a variety of paintings, drawings, collages and theatrical designs. Throughout the tour, visitors can observe major artists such as Viktor Palmov, Vasyl Yermilov, Sonia Delaunay, among many others. In addition, one can also discover diverse styles ranging from neo-Byzantine paintings to experimental works. This is one of the most extensive exhibitions of avant-garde art in Ukraine, featuring works from major museums such as the National Art Museum of Ukraine and the Museum of Theatre, Music and Film of Ukraine. The exhibition, once completed in the capital, will move on to the German city of Cologne.
Where? Paseo del Prado, 8, Madrid
When? 29 November 2022 to 30 April 2023
Hours: Monday from 12.00h to 16.00h. Tuesday to Sunday from 10.00h to 19.00h.
Tickets: You can buy tickets here
Discovering La Vallée in the classroom
We end the 7 art highlights by walking from class to class, as if we had never left school behind. Thus, the French artist Fabrice Hyber exhibits La Valléeat Fondation Cartier. Sixty works, with nature reflected, take their place on the walls like blackboards in front of the children’s chairs and tables. Fifteen of them were produced exclusively for the exhibition. Hyber believes that through the canvases “one learns to dissect knowledge, offering possible and impossible worlds”. Forests and rivers grow between the canvases, with his parents’ farm being the source of it all. And as nature blossoms, so do living things.
The walls melt and evolve into blackboards where those little adults sit to learn what they have not yet discovered.
From the recreation of being inside a school, visitors can explore as if they were children; open the doors that guard the different classrooms, look out of the windows or observe while sitting at the desks. A didactic way of playing and learning while enjoying art. In the exhibition, accompanying the works, there are also short videos in which the artist reveals his inspiration when creating. Observing the evolution of things is a very important motif in the exhibition.
Where? Boulevard Raspail, 261, Paris, France
When? 8 December 2022 to 30 April 2023.
Timetable: From 11.00h to 20.00h Tuesdays from 11.00h to 22.00h
Tickets: You can buy tickets here
The vindicative art inside MOCO Museum Barcelona
After a year counting on the MOCO Museum in Barcelona, enjoying Andy Warhol, Salvador Dalí or Banksy, as the year draws to a close they have been able to announce a new artist in their collections. The African-American artist Kehinde Wiley arrives to revolutionise with his contemporary art, showing in a very personal way black identity as a central axis. Over the centuries, the history of Western art has been unrepresentative, and here Wiley comes in, modifying iconic pieces with African characters. In this way, art lovers will not fail to question the social and political scene in which they live. Where many suffer senseless discrimination.
Throughout history, African figures have been rejected by the West. And the artist questions the old and the new to reflect on equality.
Two are the works displayed on the walls of MOCO Museum Barcelona, on the one hand, Sleep, a large bronze sculpture representing all those people who have fallen throughout history. Moreover, putting its focus on the unnecessary struggle against black people, questioning the old and the present, offering reflection on what is wrong. And on the other hand, Sleep, but on this occasion, being a large oil painting, reinterpreting the ancient paintings in the current context;
Where? Carrer de Montcada, 25, Barcelona
Opening hours: Monday to Saturday from 10.00h to 21.00h. Sunday from 11.00h to 21.00h
Tickets: You can buy tickets here
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