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Impressionism, surrealism, the Venice Biennale, madmen and Latin American design in this tour of outstanding exhibitions
The 2024 art calendar closed with major events, some on a global scale, others focused on lesser-known aspects of some artists.
In this article, a selection of exhibitions that covered avant-garde movements, the artist's work or approaches to new ways of understanding history.
An ambitious exhibition that commemorates the 100 years of this artistic movement, which brings together around 500 pieces, including paintings, sculptures, texts, films and documents, in a space of 2,200 square meters.
This exhibition, which will be open until January 13, is part of a traveling tour that began at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels and will continue in cities such as Madrid, Hamburg and Philadelphia until 2026.

The exhibition not only celebrates the centenary of surrealism, but also seeks to highlight its diversity and contemporary relevance.
Among the highlights is René Magritte's L'empire des Lumières, one of the artist's variations on the contrast between light and shadow, which recently reached an auction record of $121.2 million. Other big names featured include Salvador Dalí, Giorgio de Chirico, Max Ernst, Joan Miró and Picasso.

The exhibition also places special emphasis on women artists such as Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo, Dora Maar and Dorothea Tanning, who found in surrealism a space for emancipation and artistic experimentation.

The global expansion of surrealism since the 1930s is also highlighted, with works by artists from countries such as Mexico, Japan and Denmark, including Rufino Tamayo, Tatsuo Ikeda and Wilhelm Freddie, whose contributions reflect the influence of surrealism beyond Europe and America.
This edition of the great global event of contemporary art had doses of admiration as well as rejection.

The event, which had a record Argentine participation, had for the first time a Latin American curator, the Brazilian Adriano Pedrosa, who generated a proposal that looked towards the south, identities, minorities, something also historical.

Of the 330 artists from 80 countries who participated, more than a hundred of the invited artists came from Latin America and their presence was noted both in the national pavilions - Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela - and in the central exhibition.
Just to give an example that gives an idea of ​​the situation regarding the majority participation of artists from the Global South, which has long been ignored by the main art world circuits, it was the first time that a work by Frida Kahlo was presented, for example, with her 1949 painting "Diego and I", which hung next to another by her husband and professional partner, Diego Rivera.

Of course, every movement generates unrest and not all the reviews were positive. The New York Times called it “at best a missed opportunity, at worst something close to a tragedy,” while Harper’s described it as “a nostalgic twist on history and a fascination with identity, presented in familiar forms” and asserted that the gathering has become over the past decade “recycled junk, traditional crafts and folk art.” The exhibition challenged traditional narratives about the Roman Empire, shifting the focus to the eastern and southern regions of the former empire, in a show, curated by Andrea Myers Achi, that brought to light the deep cultural, economic and artistic connections between the Byzantine world and the African provinces, highlighting how these regions played a crucial role in shaping the history and identity of the eastern empire, even centuries after the fall of Rome in the West in 476.

The exhibition was structured in three main sections spanning from Late Antiquity to the last 500 years, exploring themes such as trade, religion and multiculturalism. The first part examined the role of Africa as a vital hub for the sustenance of the Byzantine empire. Egypt, for example, was known as the “granary of Byzantium”, while Tunisia stood out as a centre of mosaic production.
The second section addressed the expansion and adaptation of Byzantine Christianity in Africa during the Middle Ages. In this context, objects were presented that illustrate how Christian and pagan traditions coexisted and even influenced each other.

The final part of the exhibition focused on the multicultural complexity of these regions over the past five centuries, including the spread of Islam, the rise of the Ottoman Empire and the shaping of the modern world. Highlights included Ethiopian crosses made between the 12th and 17th centuries, which demonstrated exceptional artistic virtuosity in geometric design.
Among the artists represented in the exhibition were names such as Mary Beale, Elizabeth Butler and Laura Knight, who defied the expectations of their time by exhibiting their work in public and building professional careers.

The selected works reflected the challenges these artists faced in their respective eras, attempting to develop professional careers in a male-dominated environment. In many cases, women broke with gender stereotypes by tackling subjects considered exclusively masculine, such as battle scenes. A prominent example is Butler’s painting ‘The Roll Call’ (1874), which depicts soldiers taking roll call during the Crimean War.

The exhibition also highlighted how the experiences of these women varied according to their social and personal context. Although many of the artists came from privileged backgrounds, they shared a common struggle against the limitations imposed by their gender.
“Figures of the Fool. From the Middle Ages to Romanticism”, which is open until February 3, 2025, displays more than 327 works, including paintings, drawings and objects, to analyze how the figure of the fool and the jester has been represented in European art throughout the centuries.

This tour covers from the Middle Ages to Romanticism, exploring a phenomenon that, for centuries, aroused both fascination and concern in European society.

The exhibition examines how this figure began to take shape in medieval art, in a context in which Europe faced constant epidemics, diseases and the omnipresence of death. In illuminated manuscripts of the period, the Fool appeared in the margins, often wearing a cap with bells and a wooden club, and sometimes accompanied by exotic animals such as monkeys. These early depictions showed him as a marginal character, sometimes naked and vociferous, who defied social conventions.
According to curator Elisabeth Antoine-König, in medieval religious thought the Fool was seen as a “lunatic who rejected God.” However, over time, this figure evolved into that of the jester, a character who, through humor, dared to speak uncomfortable truths, even in front of kings. In the 15th century, this transformation was reflected in literary works such as Sébastien Brant’s The Ship of Fools, published in 1494 during the Carnival in Basel. This book became the second best-selling book in Europe after the Bible, which shows the cultural impact of this figure.

Artists such as Peter Brueghel and Hieronymus Bosch incorporated the fool as a central element in their compositions, while in card games and chess, the jester also found his place, represented in pieces such as the bishop, known in French as “fou” (madman). For his part, the humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam published In Praise of Folly in 1501, a work that defended heterodox thought in a context marked by religious intolerance.

With the arrival of the Enlightenment in the 18th century, rational thought attempted to banish the obsession with madness. However, artists such as Francisco de Goya recalled that reason does not always triumph over irrational impulses. Romanticism once again rescued the figure of the madman, but this time as a misunderstood artist. An example of this is Gustave Courbet's self-portrait, entitled Portrait of the Madman, which closes the exhibition, underlining the connection between madness and creativity.
Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, Édouard Manet, Berthe Morisot... In total there were 31 artists, proud defenders of painting outdoors, portraying factories, trains, cabaret singers or the poor, instead of pompous military parades, religious scenes or mythological legends.

An immersive experience that transported visitors to Paris in 1874 was one of the main attractions of the Orsay Museum exhibition, which celebrated the 150th anniversary of the birth of Impressionism.

The exhibition brought together 157 masterpieces from this artistic movement and a virtual reality installation that allowed visitors to tour the streets of the French capital as they were at that time, a project that required two years of research and development.
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• #Exhibitions
• #Impressionism
• #Surrealism
• #Venice Biennale
• #Design
• #Latin American
• #paintings
• #sculptures