Madrid´s Prado Museum has created an extraordinarily thought-provoking exhibition.
Curated by Miguel Ángel Blanco, the exhibition turns around works of art to reveal their hidden side – quite literally.
Aptly named On The Reverse and running until 3rd March, the exhibition allows the visitor to undertake “a journey that moves beyond the surface of artistic masterpieces to allow for the contemplation of a fascinating reality: the hidden side of the work of art, its reverse”.
Research on the museum collections, which include the complete photographic documentation, as well as restoration of works have allowed researchers and curators to recover many original and long forgotten features, which in many cases allow the modern eye to view the artist’s original representations, messages and details for which hardly any attention has been previoulsy paid.
This exhibition shows the secrets hidden on the B-side of the pictorial medium, whether it is on board, canvas, metal or stone. The vast majority of paintings have always been displayed hanging on a wall, so only the artist and possibly the collector would know the secrets hidden on the reverse, that intimate and private space that is forbidden to the public.
On the Reverse also includes loans from other museums including Self-portrait as a Painter by Van Gogh from the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Artist in his Studio by Rembrandt from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and The empty Mask by Magritte from the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf.
Miguel Ángel Blanco, who has for decades merged the fields of Art and Nature and is accustomed to investigating the mysteries of matter and observing reality from different angles, has devised this original proposal with his open and inquisitive perspective. An exhibition that turns works of art around to promote a new and more complete relationship between members of the public and the artists who created the selected works, through the surprises and revelations hidden on the back.
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