MADRID.- From 15 February to 9 May the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza is presenting a series of 10 paintings by Alberto Reguera (born Segovia, 1961). The artist has taken his starting point from a work in the museum’s permanent collection, Moonlit Landscape with a Road beside a Canal by the Dutch painter Aert van der Neer (Amsterdam, 1603-1677). Reguera’s works have been specially created for the exhibition and will subsequently travel to Hong Kong where they will be shown at the University Museum and Art Gallery, in autumn 2021. The exhibition, which has benefited from the collaboration of Madrid Art Gestión de Arte, is on display in the first floor Balcony gallery. Entrance is free.

One of the defining characteristics of 17th-century Dutch landscape painting is the importance conceded to the sky and clouds in all their infinite variety. This has also been an ongoing focus within Alberto Reguera’s work. In his abstract landscapes the floating pigments add lightness to the pictorial material and suggest subtle atmospheric conditions and luminous effects.

In his own lifetime Aert van der Neer was the most renowned painter of nocturnal scenes, generally moonlit ones, while throughout his career Alberto Reguera has been inspired by the brightness of the night and by dusk. He investigates the effects of light as it filters through the underlying paint layers to reach the surface of the canvas, producing a dazzling effect. “This exhibition presents imagined pictorial variations of the sky, which is conceived as a space of visual depth filled with contrasts. At times light and balanced, between shadow and brightness. In other cases intentionally pronounced, with the aim of representing a simultaneously crepuscular and dazzling atmosphere. Using different pigments that give off luminosity has helped me with this”, the artist has observed in the exhibition’s catalogue.

Reguera has based the size and proportions of his paintings on Aert van der Neer’s panel, increasing the thickness of the stretchers to recall the presence of the frame around the Dutch artist’s work. These decisions reflect the artist’s emphasis on the painting as a three-dimensional object which possesses volume and can be observed from different viewpoints.

Alberto Reguera lives in Madrid and Paris. In 2003 he took part in the exhibition exhibit-E in Washington D.C. In 2012 he created an installation in the Place du Louvre in Paris, and in 2016 the first retrospective exhibition on his work was held in Spain at the Museo Esteban Vicente in Segovia.

In 2007 he began to show his work in Asia with exhibitions in Singapore, Seoul, Shanghai and Hong Kong. In 2019 Reguera was selected for the 8th International Art Biennial in Beijing and in 2020 he presented an exhibition at the Delegation of the European Union to China in Beijing.

Reguera’s works are represented in the CEIBS collection Shanghai; the Museu Fundación Juan March, Palma; the OCDE in Paris; the Museo Municipal de Arte Contemporáneo de Madrid; the Mark Moyens collection (Washington D.C.); and the Royal Collections of Patrimonio Nacional, Spain, from which they were included in the exhibition Contemporary Art in the Palace. Painting and Sculpture in the Royal Collections, held in the Royal Palace, Madrid.