Colonial Memory in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collections

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From 25 June to 20 October 2024

The colonial system lies at the origins of modern western society while its legacy continues to affect human and geopolitical relations around the world. As Europe advanced in the conquest of liberties, it simultaneously imposed a regime of extractivism and physical domination on its territories across the globe.

This exhibition sets out to decipher the elements of colonial power within the iconography of certain works in the Thyssen-Bornemisza collections. A selection of paintings will reveal “invisibilised” stories of racial domination, marronage and the civil rights struggle, as well as the introduction of the modern mercantile system based on European military control, the use of enslaved African workers and the appropriation of firstly Latin American and later Asian and African land and raw materials.

Imagen 1: Frans Hals, Grupo familiar ante un paisaje, c.1645-1648, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza

Imagen 2: Willem van de Velde II, La flota holandesa en de Goeree, c. 1672-1673, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza

Imagen 3: Charles Ferdinand Wimar, El rastro perdido, c. 1856, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza

Imagen 4: Jan Jansz. van der Heyden, Rincón de una biblioteca, 1711, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

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