"Turner. The light is colored" at the MNAC

From May 20 to September 11, 2022, at the National Art Museum of Catalonia, MNAC presents Turner. The light is color. The exhibition consists of a hundred paintings, watercolors, drawings and engravings by the painter, considered the best landscape painter of the Romantic period, Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851).

For the artist, the elements of nature are abstract forces, with their own symbolism and meaning. This exhibition explores his fascination with meteorological and atmospheric phenomena, from the beginnings of his work, in the 1790s, to the late 1840s. Turner, recognized as the best landscape painter of the Romantic period for his mastery of light , color and atmosphere, paints the immense forces of nature that already in that time of great changes, at the beginning of the first industrial revolution, began to be threatened. Through a hundred works, paintings, drawings, sketches and engravings, the exhibition follows the development of Turner's compositions, from the first sketches to the final watercolors, oils or engravings. The exhibition reveals how the technique of watercolor was fundamental to the artist's scientific but intuitive approach, which allowed him to capture the intensity of the forces of nature with unparalleled expressive precision.

Turner's main inspiration came from his travels in Britain and continental Europe, and his landscapes incorporate a variety of sources, from classical mythology to art history or modern technological inventions. and innovation. This exhibition confronts the viewer with a sensory experience of nature that affects us today as much as it did its contemporaries. In addition, the visit to the exhibition can be complemented by a tour of The Beat of Nature, an exhibition consisting of a selection of about 80 works, mainly drawings and a group of paintings and material from artists' albums. which show the fascination that artists who worked during the 19th century felt for nature. It is a very representative group of the activity carried out by artists, such as Baldomer Galofre, Mariano Fortuny, Ramon Martí Alsina, Lluís Rigalt, Antoni Fabrés and Jaume Morera, among others, and of their interest in representing a natural environment for which they were strongly attracted and fascinated. The beat of nature.