The Spirit of Painting. Cai Guo-Qiang at the Prado

Cai Guo-Qiang (born Quanzhou, China, 1957), the first living artist to create new work for display at the Prado as the Museum approaches its 200th anniversary, is presenting The Spirit of Painting. Cai Guo-Qiang at the Prado, a project sponsored by ACCIONA.

The concept of this exhibition 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 will aim to blur the boundaries between East and West, which will converge in time in a spiritual exploration of painting.

In addition, Isabel Coixet, one of Spain’s most international filmmakers, has been directing a documentary produced by the Museo del Prado that introduces the viewer to the artist’s creative process and the production of the works for this exhibition.

The new project presented by Museo del Prado and ACCIONA focuses on contemporary creation at the Museum and arises from artist Cai Guo-Qiang’s fascination with El Greco and his decision to reaffirm his own activities as a painter, measuring himself for the first time against the great masters of the past through his innovative and unusual technique.

Cai Guo-Qiang has transformed the Hall of Realms into his studio where he has produced 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 took place during the weeks prior to the exhibition’s inauguration, culminated 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 made with ignited gunpowder, feature in the monographic exhibition The Spirit of Painting. Cai Guo-Qiang at the Prado, 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, 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.

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

Exhibition highlights
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. The first space, Rise, centers on the influence of El Greco’s spirit in Cai’s work over the last three decades, including a series of experiments exploring the flow of color, energy, light, and shadow in El Greco’s paintings. For Day and Night in Toledo, the first work to be ignited during his residency at the Hall of Realms, Cai will recreate what he saw with his mind’s eye when revisiting Toledo in early 2017—Toledo from evening to dawn, from daytime to sunset and back to the evening. The city, church, valley, and sky look as they did in El Greco’s time. Cai will represent these elements on canvas as a mirage, “as if history and the present overlap in an undefined time and space.” 

Documentary
The exceptional nature of this exhibition is being accompanied by the gaze of filmmaker Isabel Coixet, one of Spain’s most internationally acclaimed directors. She is 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 took 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, introduces visitors to the exhibition to Cai Guo-Qiang’s creative process through the personal gaze of one of Spain’s most internationally acclaimed directors.