The Palacio de Cristal was inaugurated in 1887 with an exhibition of the flora of the Philippines, Spain’s pre-eminent colony at that time. Conceived specifically for the crystal palace  (now dedicated to art projects commissioned by the Museo Reina Sofia), Pierre Huyghe’s La saison des fêtes, is loosely framed by the site’s history and former functions. Whereas the impulses behind the original displays of luxuriant tropical plants were informed by a colonialist ideology Huyghe’s work, by contrast, attempts to stand outside a strictly Eurocentric position. The visionary landscape which occupies the center of the luminous pavilion has a circular footprint, perhaps in reference to the Earth’s spherical profile, perhaps an allusion to a time piece - like a clock face - marking the cyclical flow of days, months and seasons. The plants that comprise this landscape are those associated with festivals and celebrations familiar across the world – red roses for Valentine’s day, pumpkins for Halloween, cherry blossom marking the arrival of spring. Huyghe hopes that in this utopian cosmos they might all come into flower at the same moment (sometime during the course of the exhibition); as they amalgamate disparate dates strewn intermittently across the annual calendar into one composite festival – “a bouquet of anniversaries” – people from all parts of the world might gather together to make common cause.

Born in Paris in 1962, Huyghe graduated from the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs in Paris in 1985. He has had major solo shows in a number of institutions including the Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Pompidou, París, 2000; Kunsthaus Bregenz, 2002, Austria, Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2003; Dia:Chelsea, New York, 2003; MUSAC, León, Spain, 2007. He currently lives and works in New York City.

This is the first exhibition on Wyndham Lewis (Amherst, Nova Scotia, 1882 - London, 1957) to be presented in Spain and the most comprehensive to be organised since the retrospective organised by the Tate Gallery in 1956, one year before his death. More than 150 works of art and 60 of Lewis's publications offer a complete survey of the artistic and literary output of this multi-faceted and controversial artist who was one of the key figures within international modernism of the first half of the 20th century.

In 1914 Lewis founded Vorticism, the only British avant-garde art movement, and was also a pioneer of abstraction, a war painter, a great portraitist (whose sitters included celebrated contemporary authors such as Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, and Rebecca West, among others), a novelist, essayist, publisher and editor, and a literary and art critic. Lewis founded journals such as Blast and The Enemy and could aptly be described as a "single-handed avant-garde movement", as well as "the most fascinating personality of our times", as T. S. Eliot wrote in 1913. In short, a fascinating artist as yet undiscovered by the general public.The present exhibition has been organised by the Fundación Juan March with the collaboration of Paul Edwards, the invited curator and leading international expert on Wyndham Lewis, with the assistance of other specialists on Lewis including Richard Humphreys, Alan Munton and Yolanda Morató, among others. The works in the exhibition have been loaned from museums and galleries in Europe, the USA and Canada, as well as from private collections.

The exhibition Dutch Painters in the Prado has been organised in conjunction with the publication of the fi rst catalogue of the collection of 17th-century Dutch paintings in the Museo del Prado. The exhibition brings together a sizeable group of works from this practically unknown collection, which has barely been displayed in the galleries of the Museum since the 1940s.  

The term Dutch Painting refers to the works produced in the Northern United Provinces, which became an independent nation following the signing of the Treaty of Utrecht in 1579, while the Southern United Provinces (Flanders) remained under Spanish rule. The Northern Provinces numbered even, of which Holland was the largest. Its capital, Amsterdam, was the economic engine behind this new nation, which became one of the leading European powers over the course of the 17th century. Its powerful mercantile, middle class promoted a highly active process of cultural development and used painting as the primary vehicle for an affi rmation of this new national identity.

Amadeo Vives: Doña Francisquita
Libro de Federico Romero y Guillermo Fernández-Shaw, basado en la comedia La discreta enamorada de Lope de Vega

Dirección Musical: Miquel Ortega
Dirección de Escena: Luis Olmos
Escenografía: Jon Berrondo
Figurines: María Luisa Engel
Coreografía: Florencio Campo
Iluminación: Juan Gómez-Cornejo

Reparto: Enrique Baquerizo, José Bros, Mariola Cantarero, Carlos Cosías, Amelia Font, Nancy Fabiola Herrera, Ismael Jordi, Milagros Martín, Julio Morales, María José Moreno, Sonia de Munck, Emilio Sánchez y Alex Vicens, entre otros

Orquesta de la Comunidad de Madrid
Coro del Teatro de la Zarzuela
Director: Antonio Fauró