supreme rule is the integrity of the sculptural work, meaning the block;his figures are conceived in reference to the parallel planes of an imagi-nary cube. His busts and figures are imbued with restraint, silence. Julio'saesthetic, in contrast, is centered on expression, stressing the use of ges-ture and the fragmentary. Form is subordinate to narrative, such as in theepic figure of The Mayor (1972) or in the tragic Pietà composed of TheMan of the South (1972) and Part of His Family (1972).

The Street and the City

Although most of Amalia Avia's paintings represent streets of Madrid, wenever have the impression they are true exteriors: They are lacking in natu-ral light, with walls that extend to the top of the painting, concealing thesky. This feeling of an interior is also predominant in Antonio López's firsturban landscapes. But from 1960 onwards, Antonio makes a serious effortto capture outdoor space. Painted from a high, almost cosmic viewpoint,his panoramic Madrid (1960) contemplates the countless human lives hid-den down below, beneath the roofs. Less aerial and more terrestrial,Madrid towards the Observatory (1965–70) reveals to us this latent life.In the middle of the painting is a building under construction; its walls withno ceiling recall an archaeological excavation. This labyrinth is the struc-ture of what will be a domestic interior, the skeleton of a future intimacy.

Museo Thyssen-BornemiszaPaseo del Prado, 8. 28014 MadridTel.: (+34 ) 902 760 51 1mtb@museothyssen.org

www.museothyssen.org

February 9 to May 22, 2016

Temporary exhibition halls, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. Level 0

Opening Hours

Tuesday–Sunday: 10am–7pm. The temporary exhibition will be open until 9pm

on Saturdays.Galleries are cleared five minutes before closing time.

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including all temporary exhibitions on view at the time.

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Our temporary exhibition halls have limited capacity. To guarantee admission to the show on a certain date and time, we recommend purchasing tickets in advance.

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Transport“Metro” station: Banco de España.Buses: 1 , 2 , 5 , 9, 10 , 14 , 15 , 20 , 27, 34 , 37,

45 , 51 , 52 , 53 , 74 , 146 and 150 .Train stations: Atocha, Sol and Recoletos.

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© Antonio López, María Moreno, Francisco López, Isabel Quintanilla, Julio López, Amalia Avia, VEGAP, Madrid, 2016.

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I sabe l Quintan i l la Garden , 1966 . Pr ivate co l lec t ion

Ju l io López The Man of the South , 1972 . Art i s t 's co l lec t ion

Amal ia Av ia Benito Garc ía , P lumber , 1988 . Muñoz Avia fami ly co l lec t ion

Antonio López Gran V ía , 1 August , 7. 30am , 20 15 . Pérez S imón Col lec t ion , Mexico

With the collaboration of:

Visitor ServicesTel.: (+34 ) 902 760 51 1cavthyssen@stendhal.com

Please refrain from using mobile phones in the exhibition rooms.

The contrast between aerial vision and terrestrial vision is againfound in Isabel Quintanilla; her view of Rome (1962) is anchored to thegarden in the foreground, whereas in a later view of the same city exe-cuted in 1998–99 the spectator finds himself suspended in mid-air. Thetendency to raise the viewpoint and the tendency to fix the viewpointare also found alternately in the paintings of the Gran Vía executed byMaría Moreno and Antonio López. In María's Gran Vía I (1989), the para-pet in the foreground is a visual aid that draws the spectator into thepainting. Thirty years after his first Gran Vía (1974–81), Antonio Lópezreturns to his masterpiece from a different approach. Whereas the ori-ginal Gran Vía was based on classical perspective, the new versionadopts a curved perspective stemming from several decades ofresearch. Whereas the artist painted the first Gran Vía outdoors,standing on the asphalt in the midst of the traffic, here he seeksrefuge in an interior. In the end, the quest for space, the effort tocome out into the world, proves to be a long, roundabout journey home.

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MALIA, Antonio, Paco, Julio, María, Maribel, Esperanza: the firstgroup of Spanish artists in which women enjoyed a prominent

position. All seven were born shortly before the Civil War and metin Madrid in the early fifties. They studied together, worked andexhibited together, even married among themselves, and have beenfriends ever since.

Their shared formative years in Madrid revolved around threeplaces: the San Fernando School of Fine Arts, the Prado Museum, andthe Casón del Buen Retiro (then home to the Museum of ArtisticReproductions, where they made charcoal drawings of the statues).Apart from twentieth-century Italian art, during their trips to Italy theydiscovered Renaissance frescoes and, above all, Roman painting fromantiquity. But Madrid Realism was very much a product of its time thatis difficult to imagine without neorealist films or Rafael SánchezFerlosio's novel El Jarama. Paradoxically, they were also influenced bythe abstraction of the Art Informel of the period—such as that ofLucio Muñoz. And, in contrast, the fashion for abstract art spurred theirdecision to espouse realism.

From Table to Window

The exhibition begins with still life, the primary genre for the Realistsof Madrid. It is a genre from which the human figure is excluded inprinciple, yet it constantly speaks of human beings. The Madrid Realistsuse this general method: representing existence through absence andsilence.

The table is the support and usual setting for still life, the windowsometimes providing a counterpoint. Isabel Quintanilla's painted still lifesand Francisco López's sculpted still lifes are products of the same effort:to define form through light. With utmost sobriety and maximum clarity.

Sink and Mirror (1967) by Antonio López is a still life that functionsas a special kind of self-portrait: an invisible one. The painter spent manyhours in front of that mirror and painted everything he saw—except forhis own reflection, that is. The objects, however, are reflected. Thetoothbrushes, lipstick, nail polish, eyeshadow brush, and shaving brushcould almost be mistaken for painting instruments. And the emptymirror plays the part of blank canvas. The result is a portrait not so muchof a man as of a profession. Sink and Mirror is also a bold experimentin perspective: In order to depict a large vertical expanse from a veryshort distance, the artist juxtaposes two points of view, one centeredon the mirror and the other on the sink.

The Art of Thresholds

In seventeenth-century Dutch painting (Vermeer, for example), artistsoften depict a room from a preceding space, through a doorframe.They sometimes even paint a series of doors in succession separatingseveral rooms in order to accentuate the sense of depth and heightenthe intimacy. The Madrid Realists employ similar devices; like theDutch, they subordinate perspective to an intimate poetics. They arealso obsessed with windows, which both separate and connect inte-rior and exterior—windows that look out from a dark room onto aluminous exterior or, on the contrary, onto the night from an interiorilluminated with electric light. As so many painters of interiors haveknown, from Georges de La Tour onwards, artificial light enhancesintimacy.

Both doors and windows are thresholds, metaphors of the GreatThreshold that separates the painting from reality.

Garden Walls

Maribel and Paco, Esperanza and Julio, and María and Antonio have lived inMadrid for many years; not in apartment blocks, but in low-rise buildings—small detached homes in old residential areas that sometimes recall rural

village houses. An essential part of this effect is the patio or garden; morea patio than a garden because it functions as an extension of the house.The walls of these patios seem to make up for the absent ceiling; the wallgrows, reducing the sky to a minimum or completely eliminating it. The wallprotects us against agoraphobia. The vegetation provides the necessarycounterpoint to the wall. In Isabel Quintanilla's Garden (1966) inspired byfrescoes of ancient Rome, the red wall fills the whole painting, leavingno space for the sky; it is the background to the swaying fruit trees andsolitary rose with a very long stalk.

Statues

The conquest of outdoor space in painting has its equivalent insculpture: the progression from relief to freestanding figure. Julio andFrancisco López, whose father was an engraver of medals, initially trainedas relief artists before moving on to statues.

Educated in the academic tradition, the two brothers have eachgone on to question it at one of its historical extremes. Francisco isattracted to the origins of this tradition: the early classical style in Greeksculpture of the fifth century B.C., the so-called “severe style.” In con-trast, Julio relates to the crisis of European sculptural tradition in the latenineteenth century and to the influence of Rodin. For Francisco, the

Mar ía Moreno St i l l L i fe with Watermelon , 1990 . Pr ivate co l lec t ion . Courtesy Miche l Sosk ine Inc

Antonio López S ink and Mirror , 1967. Museum of F ine Arts , Boston , Melv in B lake and Frank Purne l l Col lec t ion

Isabe l Quintan i l la Pomegranates , 1970 . Pr ivate co l lec t ion , Germany

Franc isco LópezWindow at Night , 1972 . Banco de España co l lec t ion

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