Past

Exhibitions

Consult everything you need to know about current and upcoming exhibitions at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.

Exhibitions | Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

Past | Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

This year, I would like to focus on the opportunities that can be found in schools in small towns.

The Artists

Ibon Garagarza

This year, we resorted to trial and error, and experimentation in art to understand the impact of habitual human actions on nature.

Zaloa Ipiña

The children in this group were enthusiastic and willing to participate. We could see how art can be a tool for social activism.

Nerea Lekuona

By keeping an observant attitude, we kept track of changes in the weather. When it was windy, we opened the windows and listened to the howling wind, trying to mimic it.

Maider López

The program allowed me to work with a group of schoolchildren who showed me they were able to do a lot of work. It has been such a rewarding experience, highlighting the importance of identity and belonging.

Manu Muniategiandikoetxea

This project centered on the animal world and the relationship between humans and nature. The art project brought together creativity, imagination, and environmental awareness

Ibon Sáenz de Olazagoitia

Learning Through Art 

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C.P. Juan Ramón Jiménez LHI, Cruces (Barakaldo)

Maps for a Better World

C.P. Zeberio LHI, Zeberio 

Where do we come from? Where are we going?

C.P. Arrateko Andra Mari LHI, Eibar

Art and Identity

CPI Juan Zaragueta IPI, Orio

As Many Skies as There Are Days

C.P. Lamuza LHI, Laudio/Llodio

Camouflage and Mimicry in Nature

C.P. Alonsotegi LHI, Alonsotegi

Embracing Nature

This exhibition presents the work done by more than one hundred children, aged 6 to 12, during the 2024/2025 school year in the context of Learning through Art, an educational program of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. This initiative brings artists to the classroom, where they work with teachers in projects designed to incorporate art into the school curriculum.
Through artistic exploration and discussion, the schoolchildren deal with the contents of the elementary school subjects in creative and personal ways. The activities are designed to connect art to a variety of school areas—Natural and Social Science, Spanish/Basque, Math, and so on—as a way to explore and understand the world around the students.
This year, the projects focused on the seasons and their influence on nature; the effects of human action on the environment; how to camouflage into the natural world around us. They also learned about creation and activism and their possible impact on society, and the work of local artists. Through art and self-knowledge activities they also reflected on identity, at both the personal and the collective levels.
In their processes, the students resorted to a wide variety of disciplines and mediums—painting, sculpture, photography, and performance, among others. All the projects encouraged freedom of expression and emphasized the importance of creativity in education.

The School Exchange

In the Museum

Learning through art 2025

This exhibition presents the work done by more than one hundred children, aged 6 to 12, during the 2024/2025 school year in the context of Learning

Learning through art 2025 | Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

Vito Acconci / Sergio Prego: YOU

Opening Talk

Audio guide

The Film &amp; Video exhibitions program at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is permanently committed to contemporary artistic practices associated with the moving image.
The point of departure for this exhibition is the collaboration and friendship that united Vito Acconci (b. 1940, New York; d. 2017) with Basque artist Sergio Prego (b. 1969, Donostia/ San Sebastián), whose artistic paths mingled in a key period of activities of the speculative design and architecture firm Acconci Studio. This exhibition proposes a subjective journey through Acconciʼs practice in video and performance using a display system designed by Prego, whose distinctive approach to sculpture deeply resonates with Acconci’s understanding of constructed spaces and the forces driving bodies in them. Their work share a specific attention to aesthetic phenomena emerging from the interplay of the senses with media and architecture, as though corporeality constantly tried to cope with shapes and norms before the lens. For both artists, artworks can operate as distinct manifestations of such tensions and paradoxes, whose impact directly affects the visitor’s physical self-awareness.
In the first part of the show, several videos by Prego play simultaneously while Acconci’s sound work Running Tape (1969) resonates in a corner of the gallery. The latter’s exercise —repeatedly counting while he ran until losing his breath, over and over—affects time, while Prego uses simple image editing hacks to present impossible positions and movements in space. Acconci’s voice can also be heard on the other side of the room, this time as the narrator of a documentary reflecting on his radical design practice. In the main space, visitors discover two large inflatable structures by Prego that operate as projection screens for select historical videos by Acconci. In his recorded performances, Acconci used the camera less as a means for self-portraiture than as a vehicle for provocation. We witness him directly pointing his finger or intimately whispering in Centers (1971) and Turn On (1974); and aggressively testing his body in Three Adaptation Studies (1970). In these works, Acconci desperately calls for attention as though he had presciently anticipated future uses of the camera in social media. More than five decades after their making, we cannot help feeling pointed at, often uncomfortably, by Acconci’s video works.
Gallery: 103 
Curator: Manuel Cirauqui
 
Vito Acconci 
Three Adaptation Studies, 1970 
Film Super 8mm transferido a video (fotograma) 
Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix, New York

The Film &amp; Video exhibitions program at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is permanently committed to contemporary artistic practices associated with the

Vito Acconci / Sergio Prego: YOU | Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

Masterpieces on Paper from Budapest

Masterpieces on paper from Budapest 

Audio guide map

Studies of Heads, ca. 1504–05

View of Sarmingstein on the Danube, 1511

Venus Disarming Cupid, ca. 1527–30

Dutch Farmhouse in Light and Shadow, 1635–36

Study Sheet, Two Female Models and Drapery, ca. 1717

View of Budapest, 1881

The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Winter, 1884

Two Women Embracing, 1915

Composition, 1922

13 traces, 2016

This exhibition is the result of a collaboration between the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and The Museum of Fine Arts – Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest, an esteemed institution that showcases treasures of international art spanning from Antiquity to the 21st century, and Hungarian art from the Middle Ages until today. Among the various collections that comprise its holdings, the Collection of Prints and Drawings stands out in both time range and quantity, gathering approximately 9,000 drawings and 100,000 prints by European artists.
An extensive and varied array of works, the show provides a comprehensive overview of art on paper from the 1400s to the present day, including such great artists as Albrecht Dürer, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Rembrandt, Francisco de Goya, Miklós Barabás, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Pablo Picasso, Egon Schiele, Victor Vasarely, Vera Molnar, Judit Reigl, Dóra Maurer, and even Georg Baselitz, Katharina Grosse, and Gerhard Richter. The nigh on 150 masterpieces shed light on the centuries-old traditions of the genres; on how they are always open to renewal; on their various formal solutions; on their essential features and their characteristic aesthetic effects.
The presentation is structured around twelve thematic sections that feature the distinctive characteristics of each era, while also highlighting connections and relevant issues in the realm of drawing and printmaking. At the first level, it sets before the viewer the technical diversity of drawings and prints, while on a deeper level, it shows their various functions. All this allows visitors to eventually understand the significance of drawing and printmaking within the history of art and see how, in the midst of changes in styles and trends over the centuries, it is drawings and prints that remained truest to themselves.
The exhibition also gives an insight into the rich, eventful history of the Museum of Fine Art’s Collection of Prints and Drawings, the most valuable collection of works on paper in Hungary. A number of archival elements has been gathered to narrate its origins within the art collection of a highly important Hungarian noble family, the Esterházys, and the achievements reached thanks to the indefatigable work of many dedicated museum directors, keepers, and curators.
Galleries: 205, 206, 207, 209 
Curators: Kinga Bódi and Marta Blàvia
 
Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) 
Profile Portrait of the Artist’s Son, Albert Rubens, ca. 1618–19 
Black and red chalk, pen, brown ink, brown wash on paper, 246 × 202 mm 
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest; inv. no. 1745 
Purchased from the Esterházy Collection, 1871 
© 2025 Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Spreading images and ideas

Engraving and etching

Lithography

Woodcut

Video about The Exhibition

We’d like to invite you to enjoy a virtual tour of the exhibition Masterpieces on paper from Budapest. This tour includes all the works and didactic texts in the show.

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VIRTUAL TOUR

This exhibition is the result of a collaboration between the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and The Museum of Fine Arts – Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest,

Masterpieces on Paper from Budapest | Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

Tarsila do Amaral

Paris/São Paulo: Passports for Modernism

A “Young Caipira Dressed by Poiret”

The Invention of the Brazilian Landscape

Primitivism and Identity(ies)

Cannibal Brazil

Working Men and Women

New Landscapes

A central figure of Brazilian modernism, Tarsila do Amaral (also known as Tarsila) created an original, evocative body of work, drawing on indigenous and popular imagery and on modernizing forces of a rapidly-transforming country.
In the 1920s, moving between São Paulo and Paris, Tarsila ferried between the avant-gardes of these two cultural capitals. Having constructed a “Brazilian” iconographic world, put to the test by the Cubism and Primitivism so in vogue in the French capital at the time, her painting was the root of the Pau-Brasil and Anthropophagic movements, whose search for an “authentic,” multicultural, and multiracial Brazil aimed to refound the country’s relationship with the European “centers” of colonization.
The activist dimension of Tarsila’s paintings from the 1930s and their ability to accompany the profound transformations of her social and urban environment until the 1960s confirm the strength of an oeuvre attuned to her time, always willing to reinvent itself, despite the unstable conditions of the different times and contexts that an emancipated, independent woman artist had to face.
With her invitation to delve into a Brazilian modernity that she contributed to forging even more than she painted it, Tarsila reveals in her production all the complexity of this concept always subject to debate, which raises identity and societal questions of great importance even today, both in Brazil and Europe.
This exhibition is organized by the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and le GrandPalaisRmn
Galleries: 201, 202, 203 
Curators: Cecilia Braschi and Geaninne Gutiérrez-Guimarães 
Venues: Musée du Luxembourg, Paris; Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
 
Tarsila do Amaral 
Postcard (Cartão postal), 1929 
Oil on canvas, 127.5 x 142.5 cm 
Private collection, Rio de Janeiro 
© Tarsila do Amaral Licenciamento e Empreendimentos S.A. 
Photo: Jaime Acioli

Chronology

We’d like to invite you to enjoy a virtual tour of the exhibition Tarsila do Amaral: Painting Modern Brazil. This tour includes all the works and didactic texts in the show.

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Tarsila do Amaral: Painting Modern Brazil

A central figure of Brazilian modernism, Tarsila do Amaral (also known as Tarsila) created an original, evocative body of work, drawing on indigenous and

Tarsila do Amaral: Painting Modern Brazil | Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

Paul Pfeiffer

The Pure Products Go Crazy

The Long Count (Rumble in the Jungle)

Live Evil (Kuala Lumpur)

Morning After the Deluge

Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

The Saints

Justin Bieber Torso

Paul Pfeiffer's artistic practice is distinguished by a profound inquiry into the nature of spectacle, identity, and the intricate mechanisms of image-making within contemporary culture. His oeuvre encompasses a diverse array of mediums, including video, photography, sculpture, and installation, which enables him to delve into the complexities of how images shape our perceptions and experiences.
At the core of Pfeiffer's work lies the manipulation of footage from sporting events, music concerts, and films, which he skillfully edits using early digital software. His creations often reflect on the dualities of veneration and objectification, particularly concerning global icons such as athletes and pop stars. This emphasis highlights the multifaceted roles these figures play within mass culture, drawing attention to the artificiality of media representations and prompting audiences to critically examine their own positions as consumers of such imagery.
Pfeiffer's installations frequently incorporate elements of scale, juxtaposing miniature and larger-than-life formats to disrupt the viewer's relationship with the artwork. This approach heightens awareness of their physical presence in relation to the spectacle. Additionally, his exploration of the architectural forms of stadiums and arenas serves as a critical lens through which he scrutinizes the collective experience of spectatorship. He reveals that these spaces transcend mere venues for entertainment; they are also arenas where societal and political identities are both defined and contested.
The exhibition Paul Pfeiffer: Prologue to the Story of the Birth of Freedom represents the artist's most extensive presentation in Europe, featuring approximately thirty works that span his prominent career and affirm his status as one of today's most influential artists. This exhibition, which starts in this gallery and continues in gallery 103 also located on this floor, highlights his evolution by presenting iconic pieces that draw upon the dramatic narratives of sports and religion, alongside recent works that address colonial legacies and the complexities of identity. Ultimately, this show not only celebrates Pfeiffer's era-defining contributions to contemporary art but also provides a critical framework for examining the intricate themes of identity, belonging, and the pervasive influence of celebrity culture, underscoring the relevance of his work in our media-saturated society.
Exhibition organized by The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, in collaboration with the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
Galleries: 105 and 103
Paul Pfeiffer 
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (07), 2000/24 
Matte C-print 
146.3 x 182.9 cm 
Courtesy of the artist and carlier | gebauer 
© Paul Pfeiffer. Courtesy the artist; Paula Cooper Gallery, New York; carlier | gebauer, Berlin/Madrid; Perrotin; and Thomas Dane Gallery, London

Paul Pfeiffer: Prologue to the Story of the Birth of Freedom

Architecture of the Masses

About Pfeiffer’s Practice

We’d like to invite you to enjoy a virtual tour of the exhibition Paul Pfeiffer. This tour includes all the works and didactic texts in the show.

Paul Pfeiffer's artistic practice is distinguished by a profound inquiry into the nature of spectacle, identity, and the intricate mechanisms of

Paul Pfeiffer: Prologue to the Story of the Birth of Freedom | Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

Hilma af Klint

Iberdrola

Gallery 205

The Beginnings

Spiritual Drawings, The Five (1896–1908)

Primordial Chaos (1906–07)

Eros (1907)

Gallery 206

Large Figure Paintings (1907)

Gallery 207

The Seven-Pointed Star (1908)

Evolution (1908)

Gallery 209

The Ten Largest (1907)

Gallery 203

The Dove (1915)

Altarpieces and Closing Painting (1915)

Gallery 202

The Parsifal Series and The Atom Series (1916–17)

Geometric Series and Watercolors (1920–22)

Galley 204

Tree of Knowledge (1913)

Gallery 208

The Swan (1915)

In 1906, Hilma af Klint (b. Stockholm 1862; d. 1944) embarked upon the most ambitious, ground-breaking project of her career, the Paintings for the Temple. Over nearly a decade, she created 193 paintings and drawings, many of which were like little that came before. Bold, colorful, and often untethered from references to the visible world, these works explore forces and structures that af Klint believed were hidden to the eyes. In making these works, af Klint set aside the conventions of the Swedish academic tradition, and instead looked to the scientific and the spiritual currents of her day. Incorporating ideas and imagery from these two areas, while forging her own unique artistic vocabulary, af Klint established herself a pioneer in representing the invisible.
As af Klint made her way as an artist, she was living through profound social changes, including women’s rights movements. Despite the limitations placed on women during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, af Klint was able to study at Royal Academy of Fine Arts and went on to exhibit her more traditional figurative works, but she also had to struggle to devote herself freely to art. In a context where women artists were commonly thought to be capable only of copying, not innovating, she rarely presented her more radical, abstract art publicly and struggled to find an audience who appreciated it. Undeterred, she painstakingly edited, saved, and catalogued her work so it would be preserved for future audiences, and stipulated that it not be exhibited until two decades after her death, when she believed the world would finally be ready to understand what she had produced. Ultimately, it would take even longer. Although her art was finally shown in 1986, forty-two years after her death, it would take decades more before her extraordinary legacy finally earned the recognition it deserves.
This exhibition presents a survey of the Swedish artist’s career. In addition to 110 works from the essential Paintings for the Temple, it also showcases her early more conventional creations, the automatic drawings she made with her spiritualist group The Five, her geometrically inflected series from the years after the Paintings for the Temple, and her later watercolors and sketchbooks.
Gallery: Second floor 
Curators: Tracey Bashkoff, Senior Director of Collections and Senior Curator, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and Lucía Agirre, Curator, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
 
Hilma af Klint 
Group VI, Evolution, No. 16, The WUS/Seven-Pointed Star Series 
(Grupp VI, Evolutionen, nr 16, Serie WUS/Sjustjärnan), 1908 
Oil on canvas 
102 x 133 cm 
Courtesy The Hilma af Klint Foundation, Stockholm, HaK 84 
©The Hilma af Klint Foundation, Bilbao 2024

Spiritual beliefs and theosophy. Gateways to spiritual worlds

Scientific developments. Behind the forces of matter

Women’s voice. From the dark room to public speaking

Figurative and abstract artworks. Observation and invention

We’d like to invite you to enjoy a virtual tour of the exhibition Hilma af Klint. This tour includes all the works and didactic texts in the show.

In 1906, Hilma af Klint (b. Stockholm 1862; d. 1944) embarked upon the most ambitious, ground-breaking project of her career, the Paintings for the

Hilma af Klint | Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

Yoshitomo Nara

Opening Talk nara

Private visit with the Curator

Fundación BBVA

A Lonely Place

Searching for What Was Missing

After the Quake

Thinking in Silence

Dialogues with Tradition

Drawing the Lines and Advocating Peace

Yoshitomo Nara is one of the most celebrated artists of his generation. His work is widely recognized for its bold, cartoon-like images of children with large heads and big, engaging eyes—at times menacing, challenging, and defiant, or else melancholic, and uncertain, but, over the years, increasingly calm and meditative. Nara was not immediately accepted in the art world, but his pioneering, graphic style is now well established.
Nara’s characters—his figures, animals, and hybrid beings—are a representation of himself. They provide a visual expression of his innermost thoughts and emotions and convey the depth of his humanism. The sources of Nara’s creativity are his deeply-etched memories of childhood; his knowledge of music and literature; Japanese and European art history, fostered by his boundless curiosity; and his empathetic and galvanizing encounters with people and cultures through his travels in Japan and abroad.
Nara has a long-standing love of folk, rock, and underground punk music and is renowned for his free-spirited attitude. His engagement with humanity and society is profound, and, with strongly-held views on the world we share, his work examines and incorporates ideas surrounding concepts of home, community, nature, and the environment, and their interconnectedness.
Born in 1959 in suburban Hirosaki, in northern Japan, Nara went on to study painting at the University of the Arts in Aichi. In the late 1980s, he moved to Germany to attend the prestigious Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf. He would remain in Germany for twelve years and during this time he continued to develop his unique pictorial language. In 2000 Nara returned to Japan, where he continues to live and work today. His art relates directly to his own history and lived experiences. At its core are the lasting memories from his childhood in Japan—predominantly his feelings of loneliness—and from his time spent abroad, with the familiar sense of isolation he knew in Germany, where he did not speak the language.
This retrospective exhibition is not displayed chronologically. Nara has purposefully planned it to present his works within themes that communicate their underlying personal and emotional foundations. His intention is to reveal who he is as an artist and the ideas that interest him and are central to his creative process: his recurring motifs, his evolving formal approach, and his varied techniques.
This exhibition takes us on a journey through the intriguing “World of Nara,” presenting work made over the last four decades. Nara’s imagery is original and enduring. It demonstrates the continuity of memory he has sustained throughout his career and serves to highlight his stylistic development. First and foremost, Nara views himself as a painter, but he explores each theme within a range of other mediums and formats—drawing, sculpture, and installation.
Gallery: 105 
Curator: Lucía Agirre 
Venues: Guggenheim Museum Bilbao; Frieder Burda Museum, Baden-Baden; Hayward Gallery-Southbank Centre, London
 
Yoshitomo Nara 
In the Deepest Puddle II, 1995 
Acrylic on cotton mounted on canvas 
120 x 110 cm 
Takahashi Collection 
© Yoshitomo Nara, courtesy Yoshitomo Nara Foundation

Childhood

Overseas

Return to Japan

Great East Japan Earthquake

We’d like to invite you to enjoy a virtual tour of the exhibition Yoshitomo Nara. This tour includes all the works and didactic texts in the show.

Yoshitomo Nara is one of the most celebrated artists of his generation. His work is widely recognized for its bold, cartoon-like images of children with

Yoshitomo Nara | Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

Anthony McCall: Split Second

Coinciding with the 10th anniversary of the Museum’s program devoted to artistic practices of the moving image, the Film &amp; Video Gallery will host the radically abstract, film-based work of Anthony McCall (b. 1946, St. Paul's Cray, UK). Characteristic and always enigmatic, the work of this British-born, New York-based artist characteristically generates sculptural phenomena by means of cinematic projections, though it can also be perceived from the perspective of drawing expanded in space or light art.
Since in the 1970s up to the present day, McCall has produced his installations around the idea of “solid light,” a concept referring to the volume effects generated by the controlled projection of planes of light in the exhibition space, producing shapes that hypnotically and intangibly move throughout the darkness of the gallery. In clear dialogue with the works of Richard Serra and Lucio Fontana in the Museum Collection, this exhibition will feature the premier of a single new work, titled Split Second (Mirror) IV (2024), alongside the historic projection piece Miniature in Black and White (1972) and a series of photographic prints.
Gallery: 103 
Curator: Manuel Cirauqui
 
Anthony McCall 
Face to Face, 2018 
Exhibition view at the Hepworth Wakefield, United Kingdom, 2018 
Photo: Darren O’Brien/Guzelian Pictures. Courtesy the artist

Coinciding with the 10th anniversary of the Museum’s program devoted to artistic practices of the moving image, the Film &amp; Video Gallery will host the

Anthony McCall: Split Second | Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

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TopARTE, an initiative of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, remains firmly committed to local cultural actors and organizations. The result of this fruitful collaboration is a multidisciplinary program offering a wide range of content and formats, reaching all kinds of audiences.
As part of this initiative, the Museum hosts activities from a variety of fields, including architecture, film, dance, design, gastronomy, music, performance art, and theater.

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