The starting point of the new collection of Cubist art sponsored by the Telefónica Foundation is the pre-existent collection of works by Juan Gris, enhanced by an atmosphere of excellence in keeping with its historical and aesthetic foundations.
The collection sponsored by Telefónica understands Cubism as a central movement in modern art, far-reaching in time, multiple in its spheres of realisation and extensive in its stylistic registers, a movement that generated other significant tendencies. This explains the appearance of works that fully comply with the canons of Cubism beside works that reveal the correlation between Cubism and Futurism, modern classicism, geometric abstraction and even certain strains of cultural distinctiveness.
The new collection has welcomed significant works from the original Cubist school represented by Albert Gleizes, Jean Metzinger, Louis Marcoussis, André Lhote, Auguste Herbin and Georges Valmier. The attraction of Cubism as the starting point of the European avant-garde is established by means of two Parisian works by Natalia Goncharova and Alexandra Exter. The connections between Spanish plastic art and Cubism are confirmed in the paintings by María Blanchard, Manuel Ángeles Ortiz, Joaquín Peinado, Daniel Vázquez Díaz and Celso Lagar, to whom we should add Rafael Barradas. In his turn, Barradas liaises between European and Latin American artists, prompting the appraisal of Cubism as a substratum in plastic approaches as disparate as those of Emilio Pettoruti, Joaquín Torres-García, Alejandro Xul Solar and Vicente Do Rego Monteiro. All these artists establish Cubism as a creative practice that transcends time, geography and intercontinental distances.

Organized by the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya and Fundación Telefónica