Art and Nature. A Century of Biomorphism

CaixaForum Madrid is presenting an exhibition reflecting on the past and present of the relationship between art and nature, between culture and science from 19 February to 9 June 2024 through a collection of pieces from the Modern Art National Museum - Georges Pompidou Art Centre in Paris. 

The exhibition features is made up of around eighty works of art, with significant presence of artists from recent decades who have provided new and committed points if view.  Paintings sculptures, photography, design and architecture in a transversal journey, structured into four thematic sections: metamorphosis, mimicry, creation and threat. In a presentation that renounces didactic categorisation or chronology, visitors will enter the universe of nature, which seems to be the last sign of purity and truth in the digital era.

The title of the exhibition reclaims the term derived from the Greek bios ('life') and morphé ('form'), which was incorporated into the historiography of the arts in the mid-1930s. Nowadays, when we are witnessing multiple crises - climatic, ecological and territorial - nature as we know it is in danger of disappearing, making it necessary to reconsider our links with the world that surrounds us and on which we depend.

Image Credits:

• Hervé Paraponaris, Sound System, 1993. Pompidou Centre, Paris. Modern Art National Museum - Industrial Creation Centre. © Pompidou Centre, MNAM-CCI/ Adam Rzepka, VEGAP, Madrid, 2024.
• Jean Dubuffet, La Gigue irlandaise (Irish Gigue), 1961. Pompidou Centre, Paris. Modern Art National Museum - Industrial Creation Centre. © Pompidou Centre, MNAM-CCI/ photographic documentation service at MNAM/Dist. RMN-GP. © Jean Dubuffet, VEGAP, Madrid, 2024
• Max Ernst, Les trois cyprès (Three Cypress Trees), 1951. Pompidou Centre, Paris. Modern Art National Museum - Industrial Creation Centre. © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI / Jacques Faujour / Dist. RMN-GP. © Max Ernst, VEGAP, Madrid, 2024