The Prado Museum, Madrid

• The Spanish Portraits, from 19th October 2004 to 6th February 2005.  

  The exhibition starts at the end of the Middle Ages, with works by Juan de Flandes, Titian, Antonio Moro, Rubens and Mengs (when the court was a driving force in the creation of such outstanding works). It continues up to early Modern art with works by Picasso, Gris, Miró and Dalí.

  Portraiture was one of the most important genres in European painting since the end of the Middle Ages. It occupies an important place in Spanish painting because most of the great artists were also great portrait painters (Velazquez, Goya, Picasso, etc). Thus an exhibition of portraits is inevitably a collection of masterpieces.

  The Spanish Portraits at the Prado Museum

Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

• The Aztec Empire,  from 14th March to 4th September 2005.  

  The exhibition consists of more than 500 works. They reveal the grandeur of an empire that flourished between the 14th and 15th centuries – practically at the same time as the Renaissance in Europe. This is an exhaustive view of a pre-Columbian civilisation and includes works from public and private collections in Mexico, the United States and Europe. 

  Split into 10 themes, it explores the development of Aztec culture, starting with its origins and the influence of earlier civilisations. It continues through the period of its greatest splendour and the relations with other cultures such as the Tarasco Empire, until its decline following the arrival of Hernán Cortés in 1519.

  This exhibition arrives at the Guggenheim in Bilbao following its appearance at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. In Bilbao it will be expanded to widen Spanish contact with Aztec culture.

  GuggenheimBILBAO

Joan Miró Foundation, Barcelona

• Woman –the metamorphosis of modernity, from 25th November 2004 to 6th February 2005.

  This exhibition is devoted to woman in her role as muse and as incarnation of modernity. It contains paintings, drawings and sculptures by more than a dozen artists, including Tarsila do Amaral, Frida Khalo, Le Corbusier, Fernand Léger, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, Henry Moore, Pablo Picasso, Giacometti, André Masson, Louise Bourgeoise, Yves Klein, etc.

  It explored female iconography, starting from the early 1930s in France. In earlier cultural perceptions woman appeared as a mother, a virgin, etc. Later, she emerges as a "woman-muse" – inspiring artistic creation. In this guise she lends a more liberated air to the concept of modernity.

  Joan Miró Foundation