5 july, 1994 - 13 october, 1994 /

Sabatini Building, Floor 4

Anish Kapoor. It Is Man, 1988. Sculpture. Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía Collection, Madrid — Anish Kapoor. *It Is Man*, 1988. Sculpture. Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía Collection, Madrid

Following Artistas Españoles. Obras de los años 80 y 90 en las colecciones del Museo (Spanish Artists. Works from the 80s and 90s in the Museo collections), a complementary exhibition is presented, joining thirty-two works by international artists incorporated in the last three years into the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía's Collection through acquisition, dation or donation. The common denominator of these works, bar the six pieces by Lucio Fontana and one by Barnett Newman, is that they have been produced either in the Eighties or the Nineties; therefore, the exhibition looks to consider these points of contact and connection with the international movements that link Spanish artists.

The Museo increases the presence of already acclaimed artists from overseas, such as Donald Judd with his work Untitled (1992) and Bruce Nauman and Barnett Newman with the piece Profile of Light (1967), while also backing young artists starting out in their careers, for instance the Belgian artist Lili Dujourie with her work De Ochtend die Avond zal zijn I (1993).

The Museo Reina Sofía also fulfils one the main aims of its acquisition policies: to collaborate with preeminent international artists in the panorama of contemporary art, such as Anish Kapoor and Thomas Schütte. Furthermore, it attempts to call attention to those artists that have ties to Spanish artists and those that share material and conceptual plights.

The works displayed sketch out the complex creative horizon that details questions stemming from the artists' critical labour - the reconsideration of art, its function and practice, the symbolic content of the material, the limits of the picture, the subject matter of sculpture and the conquests of the photo are some of the themes addressed.

Therefore, the exhibition maps out its journey by starting with Nauman's monumental sculpture Untitled. Model for Trench Shaft and Tunnel (1978) and finishing with José Pedro Croft's etching and aquatint Cilindro II (1992).

The exhibition also shows that, via the acquisitions, it provides continuity to minimalist traditions, boosting the presence of current British sculpture and championing photography as the support for new narrations with the works of Cindy Sherman, Jan Fabre, Hamish Fulton and Ian Wallace.