Cai Guo-Qiang at the Prado

MADRID - The concept of this exhibition, which opens to the public on 25 October, arises from the artist’s ongoing relationship with El Greco’s unique artistic figure and spirituality and proposes a dialogue with artists in the Museum’s collection: a dialogue in which Cai Guo-Qiang has been able to further his engagement with his predecessors, a list that includes Titian, El Greco, Velázquez, Rubens, and Goya, which will converge in time in a spiritual exploration of painting.

Cai Guo-Qiang (born Quanzhou, Fujian Province, China, 1957) will transform the Hall of Realms into his studio where he will produce a group of works inspired by the memory of this historic room, formerly part of the Buen Retiro palace, and by a dialogue with the old masters represented in the Museum. This artist’s residency, which will take place during the weeks prior to the exhibition’s inauguration, will culminate with the creation of The Spirit of Painting, a monumental painting measuring approximately 18 metres long.

Both this work and the others by Cai Guo-Qiang, also to be made with ignited gunpowder, will feature in the monographic exhibition The Spirit of Painting. Cai Guo-Qiang at the Prado, to be shown in the Prado’s Jerónimos Building. Visitors can appreciate the dialogue that Cai Guo-Qiang has maintained with the spirit of El Greco from his early years as an artist to the present through a selection of works which, in addition to those mentioned above, will also include various early paintings. These take the form of recollections of the journey he undertook in 2009 in the footsteps of El Greco (from his native island of Crete to Venice and Madrid before concluding in Toledo), as well as a new triptych inspired by that artist.

Cai Guo-Qiang, The Spirit of Painting, 2017. Gunpowder on canvas, 300 x 1800 cm. Courtesy © Museo Nacional del Prado.

The Spirit of Painting originated from the artist’s longstanding dialogue with the spirit of El Greco. Over the past two years, working with the Prado’s experts and studying its research expanding into an interrogation of the past, present, and future of painting.

The on-site process will culminate on October 23, when, at dusk, Cai will explode the exhibition’s centerpiece: the 18-meter The Spirit of Painting. These works will join a selection of other gunpowder paintings created over the last two years, to be exhibited inside the Prado’s Jerónimos Building.

For the creation of his new paintings for the exhibition Cai Guo-Qiang will be making his first use of local gunpowder from Valencia.

The themes and artworks in the four exhibition rooms naturally form a progressive rhythm that mirrors the Chinese compositional formula: Rise, Development, Shift, and Unification.

Cai Guo-Qiang, Day and Night in Toledo. Gunpowder on canvas, 260 x 600 cm. Courtesy © Museo Nacional del Prado

Cai Guo-Qiang, The Distant Clouds, 2017. Gunpowder on canvas, 360 x 300 cm. Courtesy © Museo Nacional del Prado

Cai Guo-Qiang, Alchemist, 2017. Gunpowder on canvas, 240 x 200 cm. Courtesy © Museo Nacional del Prado.

Cai Guo-Qiang, El Salón de Reinos…, 2017. Gunpowder on canvas, 360 x 600 cm. Courtesy © Museo Nacional del Prad

Documentary

The exceptional nature of this exhibition will be accompanied by the gaze of filmmaker Isabel Coixet, one of Spain’s most internationally acclaimed directors. She will be offering a portrait of the artist’s creative process and his production of the works to be displayed in the Museum’s Jerónimos Building.

Filming will take place in New York where Cai Guo-Qiang lives and has his studio, on Long Island and in Madrid during his residency in the Hall of Realms, as well as in Valencia and Toledo.

The documentary, filmed in 4K, will introduce visitors to the exhibition to Cai Guo-Qiang’s creative process through the personal gaze of one of Spain’s most internationally acclaimed directors.

October 25, 2017 to March 4, 2018

Cai Guo-Qiang, Last Carnival, 2017. Gunpowder on canvas, 280 x 750 cm. Photo by Yvonne Zhao, courtesy Cai Studio.

Cai Guo-Qiang, Detail of Last Carnival, 2017. Gunpowder on canvas, 280 x 750 cm. Photo by Lydia Ohl, courtesy Cai Studio.

Cai Guo-Qiang, Mountain in Heat, 2016. Gunpowder on canvas, 239 x 450 cm. Photo by Yvonne Zhao, courtesy Cai Studio.

Cai Guo-Qiang, Palmyra, 2017. Gunpowder on canvas, 240 x 450 cm. Photo by Wen-You Cai, courtesy Cai Studio.

Image of the exhibition galleries “The Spirit of Painting. Cai Guo-Qiang at the Prado”. Photo by Wen-You Cai, courtesy Cai Studio.

Ignition of gunpowder painting at the Salón de Reinos (Hall of Realms) Madrid, 2017. © Museo Nacional del Prado.

Cai Guo-Qiang in front of his work Day and Night in Toledo, Madrid, 2017. © Museo Nacional del Prado