FLOWERS AND FRUITS

Floral and fruit motifs have been a regular part of the imagery of the Banco de España since its foundation in 1782. Symbols such as the cornucopia —a symbol of prosperity and generosity since ancient times— frequently decorate banknotes, share certificates and administrative documents. They are also found amongst the sculptural features on the exteriors and interiors of the bank's own premises and in the stained glass ceilings above some areas of the buildings.

These motifs also serve as the inspiration for many of the pieces in the Banco de España Collection, from tapestries, carpets and porcelains to contemporary paintings, photographs and sculptures. This is also the theme of one of the collection's masterpieces, Pomona and Vertumnus (1626), by Juan Van der Hamen, a complete allegory of the magnanimity of nature. The painting is the starting point for Flowers and Fruits, an exhibition which seeks to provide a partial insight into some of the changes and enduring features of the still life and bodegón genres over the centuries.

Fruits, flowers and other inanimate objects once played only an ancillary function in narrative scenes. However, with the emergence in the early decades of the 17th century of the still life genre (and its subgenre, the bodegón), they were freed from this secondary role and have since been used as allegories of some core aspects of life and death. In the great academic classifications of art, still life was long viewed as the 'poorer sibling'. At the opposite extreme to historical, mythological and religious art, it became the art 'of the small', an examination of the insignificant. Eventually, it was to take on revolutionary overtones for history, as evidenced by the recovery of the genre in modern and contemporary art.

In 2021, the Banco de España inaugurated a new exhibition space in Cibeles with a show entitled 2328 Reales de Vellón. The show focused on the human figure as reflected in portraiture, with all its unique, exceptional and narrative features. Now, we have given over the space to nature, to the apparently inconsequential, the anonymous and the fragile.

The exhibition, comprising nearly fifty works by over thirty different artists, examines the history of the still life from its Baroque origins to the present day. This is a unique opportunity to explore the Banco de España's contemporary collections in a fascinating journey that encompasses a range of artistic media: painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, tapestries and other decorative objets d'art.

The exhibition is divided into five sections:

Flowers and Fruits for Thinking the Image: Unimaginable still lifes

This exhibition is unique in combining works from the past with other more recent pieces, in an attempt to investigate some of the changes and enduring features in the still life genre. In this first group of contemporary works, we explore the relationship that Baroque scholars established between the representation of fruits and flowers and the status of the image. We look at notions such as the copy-versus-original debate, trompe l'oeil and the complex relationship between reality and representation and features of what is now known as appropriationism.

This section shows transformations of the genre in works related to the field of photography, the quintessential medium of transience. In the mindset of the seventeenth century, when the genre was first developed, many of these works would never have been viewed as still lifes. And yet, strictly speaking, that is exactly what they are, albeit they represent another period with its own concerns. The compositions are made up of diverse and unexpected elements, reflecting the dynamics of use and wastage of the consumer society. They include elements from other corners of the globe and contain subtle thematic twists that renovate the genre, drawing it into fresh terrain.

The Still Life: Academe and avant-garde

The still life genre first emerged in the Baroque period and was based on an extremely realistic approach to painting. It is all the more surprising, then, that it should reappear so forcefully in the twentieth century, precisely at a time when the realistic imitation of the natural had started to break apart. However, the development of successive avant-garde movements and their replicas was in no way at odds with a genre that was retrieved precisely because it had historically been viewed as a minor art form. From impressionism through to abstract art, many artists were becoming interested in motifs which, precisely because they were more descriptive than narrative, paved the way for a radical experimentation in form. This trend was particularly evident among the successors of the Paris School. At the same time, another group of artists saw still life as a means of returning to a more traditional realistic depiction of nature. The generation known as the 'Madrid realists', for example, used it to usher in a kind of new academicism. Both the radical break of the avant-garde artists and this more continuist tendency drew on the influence of past masters, particularly from the Spanish Baroque. These works are infused with interplays of reflection and transparency, an obsessive observation of natural forms and reflections on the immanence and transience of all life.

The Baroque: Flowering and fruitfulness

The centrepiece of this exhibition is Pomona and Vertumnus, one of the major works by Juan Van der Hamen, displayed alongside his pendant, An Offering to Flora, on loan from the Museo del Prado, which is similar in composition, albeit in an opposing symmetrical arrangement. Like some other works in the exhibition, the two paintings probably hung on the walls of the palace of Jean de Croy, a leading figure in the Spanish court of the time. De Croy hosted sumptuous receptions at his home in Madrid for visiting members of the Flemish elites, intended to foster their allegiance to the new king, Philip IV. In this way, the bodegón contributed to the forging of a distinct urban aristocratic culture in seventeenth century Madrid. On the one hand, it created a fiction of abundance, masking the true economic situation of the city. On the other, it showcased the prosperity that the Flemish —like Jean de Croy himself— would continue to enjoy under the new political order.

However, despite the success of the bodegón and floral depictions in the Baroque period, the genre was still held in lower esteem than other academic categories. Still lifes were viewed as being less technically complex than portraiture and less morally uplifting than religious or historical paintings. Nonetheless, the artists involved knew how to conceal behind the flowers and fruit powerful philosophical and speculative metaphors and reflections on concepts such as hospitality, mysticism and fragility.

Botanical Cabinet I: Flowers from another world

In the Early Modern Age, when the still life genre was first developing, colonial expeditions and the discovery of new species led to the classification and visual representation of plants, flowers and fruits. The result was to foster a symbiosis between the scientific and the artistic. Developed in the powerful metropoles of Europe, these disciplines have left their mark on the discourses of many contemporary artists who in recent decades have cast a decolonial gaze on such practices, whose effects are still being felt today.

This section contains works by a number of artists who critique this former exoticisation or seek to recover that taxonomic approach for new purposes. They explore the dynamics of inequality and abuse that emerged in the colonial period and invite us to redraw the boundaries between disciplines and their relationship with power. Plants and flowers, seeds and fruits often serve as metaphors for people. Among the leaves comprising this unusual botanical cabinet are intriguing reflections on forced migration and endangered communities, and on ways of living with nature that are resistant to the mass exploitation of resources and its consequences.

Botanical Cabinet II: Seeing without smelling

The genres covered by this exhibition raise issues related to human perception, illusion and the representation of reality. Since its inception, staging and artificiality have been central features of the still life. This final section therefore explores the role of the photograph as artifice and the way in which photography has revived the mise-en-scène of the traditional still life.

We are currently living in what is known as the 'post-photographic' age, when the traditional image has become something else, an instrument questioning its own veracity, an element of mass production and —thanks to its digital development— mass consumption. A giant question mark has been placed over the implications of our relationship with reality and its image. In this new photographic and sociological context, with its constant need to challenge reality and its simulacra, floral representations are a common feature, perhaps because of their importance in the history of our way of looking at the world. The artists featured here raise issues such as the relationship between photography, truth and verisimilitude and the nature-versus-artifice debate in a society that professes its admiration for the biological while at the same time destroying it.

This exhibition is dedicated to the memory of José María Viñuela, curator of the Banco de España from 1982 to 2015, who passed away last June. Many of the works in the show were added to the bank's collection as a result of Jose María's knowledge, curiosity and sensitivity to the art of our time.

Flowers and Fruits. Banco de España Collection opens on 25 October 2022 and will run until 25 February 2023. It is open to the public from Tuesday to Saturday, 11 am – 2 pm, 4 pm – 8 pm. Admission is free with a prior reservation. Guided tours will be held on Wednesdays from 6:00 to 7:00 pm and Saturdays from 11:00 am to 12:00 pm, with special tours for family groups on Saturdays from 12:15 to 1:15 pm.

Artists: Paula Anta, Juan de Arellano, Alberto Baraya, Giovanni Battista Crescenzi, Lothar Baumgarten, Francisco Bores, Hannah Collins, Gabriel de la Corte, Pancho Cossío, Hans-Peter Feldman, Joan Fontcuberta, Sandra Gamarra, João Maria y Pedro Gusmão y Paiva, Federico Guzmán, Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe, Joan Hernández Pijuán, Fritzia Irízar, Carmen Laffón, María Loboda, Francisco López Hernández, Linarejos Moreno, Vik Muniz, Antoni Muntadas, Gerard Peemans, Gonzalo Puch, Xavier Ribas, Antonio Saura, Wolfgang Tillmans, Miguel Ángel Tornero, Juan van der Hamen y León, Rafael Zabaleta