iPalacio de VelázquezRetiro
Fernando Sánchez Castillo: The Wayward Pearl
A retrospective of over 200 works by Fernando Sánchez Castillo dismantling monuments and symbols of power, framed around the legend of a lost royal pearl.
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Franco's yacht, the Azor, is here, crushed into large metal blocks that crowd against the walls. Fernando Sánchez Castillo compacted it and called the result Síndrome de Guernica, and most of this show works the same way: take a symbol of power and make it precarious, absurd or incomplete.
Nearly 200 pieces fill the restored 1883 pavilion in the Retiro: watercolours, bronzes, videos and works in progress. You walk among a crowd of people who refused orders, from a bronze Tank Man the size of Michelangelo's David to Lorca caught mid-leap. There are also cardboard models built to shield Madrid's monuments, Cibeles included, from Civil War bombs. The most Madrid object in the building is a painting of a crack in Calle Claudio Coello that reopens every time the council seals it.
The artist has moved his studio into the Palacio and works in public view, so the show is still being made while you're in it. Entry is free.
Editor's pick
Franco's yacht, the Azor, crushed into metal blocks. A bronze Tank Man the size of Michelangelo's David. Nearly 200 works by Fernando Sánchez Castillo pick apart monuments and the symbols of power.
Look for
Síndrome de Guernica
Look for Franco's yacht, the Azor, compacted into large metal blocks that press against the gallery walls.
Tank Man in bronze
The 1989 Tiananmen protester, cast at exactly the size of Michelangelo's David, leads a gallery of bronze and 3D-printed figures of resistance.
August Landmesser in wood
The sequence of resisters, including the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo and a leaping Lorca, ends on a large wooden figure of the German worker who refused the Nazi salute.
The brothel doorstep from La Rambla
Marble slabs from a former brothel entrance in Barcelona, pitted by the heels of the women who worked there, which the artist calls the city's most important sculpture.
Grieta (2015)
A large painting on cotton of a crack in Madrid's Calle Claudio Coello that keeps reopening however often the council seals it.
Good for
- Cheap Culture
- Nerding Out
- Rainy Days
Also at Palacio de Velázquez
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Image credits
7
- Fernando Sánchez Castillo: The Wayward PearlMuseo Reina Sofía
- Fardo, by Andrea CanepaCourtesy of Palacio de Cristal
- Palacio de VelázquezJ.L. De Diego, Public domain
- Palacio de Cristalvpogarcia, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
- Museo Nacional de Artes DecorativasLuis García (Zaqarbal), Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Museo del PradoEmilio J. Rodríguez Posada (Emijrp), via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
- Museo NavalFernando, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0