Jackson Pollock and Andy Warhol have historically been read as opposites—the former,
symbol of gestural and abstract painting; the second, an icon of pop and serial reproduction.
This exhibition invites us, however, to dismantle this dichotomy and discover the points in which
that their paths cross, revealing a thread of continuity between them.
Although art history has presented these artists to us as distant and contrary figures,
In fact, their pictorial interests and concerns advanced in parallel. Both explored
space, repetition, abstraction, and seriality. His footprints walk in directions
similar, even if they did so in stylistically different ways. Warhol admired Pollock and
Both shared a concern about how to reinvent space in painting. Their
Works are not limited to representing objects or scenes, but play with the relationship between figuration
and abstraction, background and figure, layers and overlays.
The exhibition revolves around this dialogue between both painters, a core that is expanded with the
contributions from other artists of his time. It brings together more than a hundred works—paintings,
photographs, silkscreens and other techniques—from international collections such as
the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art or the Andy Warhol Museum, along with
works from the Thyssen collections. These are joined by creations by Robert Rauschenberg,
Mark Rothko, Sol LeWitt, Cy Twombly and a group of essential artists on the American scene:
Lee Krasner, Audrey Flack, Anne Ryan, Marisol, Perle Fine, Hedda Sterne and Helen
Frankenthaler. All these voices dialogue with each other to show that the border between one and the other
others are much more permeable than we usually imagine.
Welcome
Estrella de Diego, curator of the exhibition, writes an essay in the catalogue, giving a tour
through art history in an unusual way: by looking at the shoes depicted
in some of the most emblematic works in the history of Western painting. For her, the
The shoes on which he focuses his gaze are almost a declaration of intent, an autobiography.
silent. From the delicate shoes of the Flemish Renaissance painter Jan van Eyck
Even Van Gogh's worn boots, this seemingly secondary detail becomes
a door to understand the concerns of each artist and the meaning that art has had in
each historical period.
Based on the 1951 documentary directed by Hans Namuth and Paul Falkenberg about the work of
Jackson Pollock, in which his shoes appear for a moment, we associate the artist with boots
dirty, covered in paint drips. In Warhol's case, the shoe illustrations he made
At the beginning of her career, elegant, fine, high-heeled shoes are apparently found
very far from Pollock's.
This guide adds to the curator's proposal and invites you to put yourself in the artists' shoes.
to "take a walk" with them. Putting yourself in someone else's shoes is a way of imagining their life,
to try to understand their perspective. We invite you to move between both artists.
