Temporary Exhibitions
The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao offers a dynamic program of temporary modern and contemporary art exhibitions that deepen our understanding of art today and give an overview of the international scene in art history.
Hilma af Klint
On the Museum’s second floor you will find and exhibition of some of the most relevant works by Swedish artist and pioneer of abstraction Hilma af Klint (b. 1862; d. 1944).
Hilma af Klint’s works were visual representations of complex spiritual ideas, predating the first purely abstract compositions by artists such as Piet Mondrian, Vasily Kandinsky, and other creators. Inspired by Theosophy, Anthroposophy, and other spiritual and religious movements, af Klint deals with subjects that include the different stages of life, the evolution, and others. She also drew inspiration from science, as attested by the series shown in gallery 202, dedicated to subatomic particles, and the numerous entries on the subject in her notebooks.
Having filled over 20,000 pages with her notes, af Klint expressed her wish for her work to remain unseen for twenty years after her death. Accordingly, she left a treasure of abstract work for future generations to find.
Hilma af Klint
The Ten Largest, Childhood, Untitled Series, Group IV, No. 1, 1907
Tempera on paper, mounted on canvas
322 x 239 cm
Courtesy The Hilma af Klint Foundation, Stockholm, HaK 102
©The Hilma af Klint Foundation, Bilbao 2024
Anthony McCall: Split Second
Film & Video, the Museum’s gallery dedicated to video art and moving image, is hosting Split Second, an exhibition of the oeuvre by British-born, New York-based artist Anthony McCall. McCall’s solid light works occupy a space between sculpture, cinema, drawing, and installation.
Upon entering the exhibition, visitors are met with a photograph series called Smoke Screen (2017), as well as with one of McCall’s earliest works: Miniature in Black and White (1972), an installation comprised of a carousel slide projector producing images that create negative afterimages on the viewer’s retina.
In the central area of the gallery, visitors discover Split Second Mirror IV (2024), an interactive installation that radically transforms the space around it and befuddles perception through the interplay of artificial fog, mirrors, and the volumes produced by the light projected.
Anthony McCall
Split Second (Mirror) IV, 2024
View of the installation, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
Courtesy of the artist and Sean Kelly, New York, Los Ángeles & Sprüth Magers
© Anthony McCall
