Two years ago, an exhibition program linked to the collection of Blanca and Borja Thyssen was launched at the Thyssen Museum, which is added to the TBA21 program, promoted by Francesca Thyssen, and the rental of the Carmen Thyssen Collection. A landing (not even in Normandy) of the Thyssens in the national museum that bears the baron’s surname, whose collection was acquired by the Spanish State in 1993. Focusing on the first, they have already passed through the rooms of the art gallery (four in the first floor, next to the permanent collection) hyperrealism, Robert Nava, André Butzer and Jordy Kerwick, all very much to the taste of B & B (Blanca y Borja), with a common denominator: strident colors. Quite the opposite of the term ‘demure’ (discreet, modest, minimalist), the silent luxury, so fashionable today among Generation Z. Until now, the artists chosen in this program did not have retrospectives in large museums. Something that does not happen with the fifth proposal, the North American Peter Halley (New York, 1953), “a contemporary classic, an essential figure, who has a great intellectual background”, in the words of Guillermo Solana, artistic director of the museum and curator of the sample. Halley does have a long career behind him and is the one who opens the exhibition season at the museum. Related News report Yes Rosario de Velasco, the Falangist painter that Thyssen brings from oblivion Natividad Pulido The great-niece of the Madrid artist asked for help from social networks and the press to find important works from the 30s and 40s, whose whereabouts are unknown: About thirty old acquaintances from Spain have been found, in 1986 he exhibited for the first time in our country. It was in a collective about the New York scene, ‘Art and its double: a New York perspective’, held at the Caja de Pensiones Foundation in Madrid. And in 1992, the Reina Sofía dedicated a retrospective to him, with great success. Carlos Durán, founder of Senda in Barcelona, has been his lifelong gallerist in Spain. He has also worked with Javier López. The Thyssen takes up the baton with an exhibition of twenty large-format paintings, made between 1985 and 2024. One of them, ‘Reencuentro’ (2024), has been acquired by Blanca and Borja Thyssen. The title of the exhibition, ‘Peter Halley in Spain’, is not gratuitous, since all the works on display come from public collections (the Reina Sofía, the IVAM, the La Caixa Foundation have works by the artist) and private collections in our country. There is a permanent installation of Halley in the José Hierro Public Library, in Usera, based on a story by Borges, ‘The Library of Babel’. After passing through the Thyssen (until January 19), the exhibition will be seen at Casal Solleric in Palma de Mallorca, which has collaborated in the production of the project. Peter Halley, last Friday, during the presentation of his exhibition at the Thyssen Museum Efe, Guillermo Solana explains that Peter Halley “transformed the tradition of geometric abstraction of the 20th century, dominated by formalism and self-referential idealism.” So were Malevich, Mondrian, Kandinsky, Kupka, Albers, Stella… «Halley reinterprets geometry as a means of confinement and social control. It puts abstraction on the ground. Far from a Platonic ideal, it is in our lives. Just as Duchamp gave the beloved ‘Gioconda’ a mustache and goatee – the postmodern golden fleece – Halley plants bars on Malevich’s sacrosanct square – a cult object – and places gotelé on top. Two thuggish, irreverent acts. The iconic prisons and cells, and the conduits that connect them, are filled with critical humor. They remember integrated circuits. In 1981, Halley took the square and put bars on it: «Geometry imprisons us, also socially. In the 20th century we isolate ourselves, we confine ourselves to the house, in the car, in front of the television. An attack against geometric abstraction, an irreverence against Malevich’s sacred ‘black square’. The commissioner explains that Halley “uses a basic lexicon, but uses astonishing formulas: it alters, rotates, dilates, compresses, distorts… There is even an overflow of the contour: the prisons come out of the background.” The simple compositions from the beginning of his career have become more complex and in recent years the prisons have come off the canvas and his fluorescent palette has also incorporated other tones, such as metallic. “There have been unexpected twists and turns in the limited universe that is my work,” Halley warns. One of his colorful paintings (‘The Turn’, from 2008) has been installed in the lobby of the Thyssen Museum, very close to ‘Paradise’, by Tintoretto, an artist he discovered in Venice in 1977. «It is a wonderful experience, a privilege », comments Peter Halley. Obsessive and perfectionist in his painting, he has personally made the selection of the works on display (although the artist says that the true curators of the exhibitions are the collectors) and has supervised every last detail of the assembly and the catalogue. He doesn’t neglect anything.
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