MADRID.- The Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza is presenting a major exhibition devoted to the Sevillian painter and sculptor Carmen Laffón (1934-2021), the second woman to be admitted as a full member of the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid. The exhibition revolves around the artist's unique figurative world and presents the central ideas and motifs in her compositions, which recur as variations and series throughout her more than sixty-year career.

Carmen Laffón. Variations features 77 works, including oil paintings, charcoal drawings and sculptures. They are organised into nine sections centred on the artist’s most frequent iconographies—the doll Marcelina, the cot, baskets, cupboards, the Doñana National Park (El Coto), vineyards, whitewash and salt marshes—and establish a dialogue between early and late works.

At the start of her career Laffón depicted objects and landscapes from a realistic perspective but as her work evolved she became more interested in painting itself rather than in what it represented, almost reaching abstraction. The artist created her compositions using glazes and diffused areas of paint. Imbued with poetry and feeling, her work remains difficult to categorise.

This solo exhibition, the first major retrospective devoted to Carmen Laffón since her death in late 2021, focuses on still life and landscape, the two key genres within her extensive output, produced between 1956 and 2021. Laffón’s interiors are filled with everyday objects such as baskets, sewing machines and cupboards, while her exteriors relate to her life in Seville and Sanlúcar de Barrameda (Cádiz) and depict rooftops, cityscapes and landscapes. She often produced variations on these subjects using charcoal, tempera and oil, and from the mid-1990s onward also made sculptures. In this later period her work reveals greater freedom, with series on new themes such as El Coto, the vineyard, whitewash and salt flats, which she depicted in large formats.

1. Doll and Cot

The first section of the exhibition focuses on a doll with the brand name Marcelina and on the motif of the cot, bringing together two pairs of oil paintings executed between 1965 and 1995 that relate to childhood. The first pair, both depicting Marcelina, belongs to what could be considered Carmen Laffón's first series, executed in the 1960s, characterised by a dreamlike atmosphere reminiscent of magic realism. The second, larger pair depicts cot and conveys the fragility and vulnerability of newborn infants.

2. Still lifes

The next section focuses on still lifes, a genre that allowed Laffón to experiment with formats and techniques using everyday objects. These still lifes are typically horizontal and divided into two planes: the tabletop above and the drape of the tablecloth below. The objects on the table are generally depicted in greater detail in the centre, while the surrounding area is painted using a diffused pictorial technique. In the 1990s the artist began to introduce landscapes as backgrounds, as in Table with Flowers in the Garden (1991-1992), while she subsequently made use of vertical compositions. Laffón blurred the boundaries between media and artistic disciplines, as in Improvised Shelf (2002-2003), a work midway between a painting and a sculpture.





3. Objects

At the outset of her career Carmen Laffón devoted a large number of works to everyday household objects, exploring the beauty of simple things: baskets, small pieces of furniture, sewing machines, etc. Continuing over time, this body of work allows for an appreciation of how Laffón’s perspective on the object changed, evolving from being merely another element in the composition, as in Sewing or The Sewing Box (1963), to become the key motif in the work, occupying the entire pictorial space, as in Basket with Bedlinen (1992-1996). Also on display in this gallery are three versions of sewing machines that allude to the female domestic sphere and to manual and domestic work: Sewing Machine (1966-1967) Covered Sewing Machine (1967) and Concealed Sewing Machine (1978-1992). Two of the sewing machines are covered, concealed under a cloth, thus introducing an interplay between the visible and the invisible, what is shown and what is hidden.

4. Urban Landscape

In the 1960s and 1970s Carmen Laffón began to paint urban rooftops (The Terrace. Madrid, 1973-1975) and views of what could be seen from them (Seville from the River, 1982-1984/1992). This section of the exhibition also includes three views of Sanlúcar, painted between 1975 and 2002, which clearly reveal a division into two, parallel horizontal planes. Over the years the rooftop gradually decreases in importance in favour of the city skyline and the sky, the latter occupying almost the entire upper half of the canvas, prefiguring the artist’s celebrated views of The Coto.

5. Coto

The Coto was the location with which Laffón developed the strongest personal connection. Around 1978 she started to paint it from Sanlúcar, and this subject led to a series of horizontal views in pastel tones in which she established a clear dividing line between sky and sea. She revisited this series between 2011 and 2014 in a more abstract form. She captured the changing light throughout the day, the seasons and the atmospheric phenomena of the Guadalquivir estuary in numerous versions. At around this time Laffón painted large-format views at low tide, such as Low Tide at La Jara (2015) and Shoreline of El Coto from Bonanza (2013-2014).

6. Cupboards

The subject of the cupboard acquired great importance in Carmen Laffón's oeuvre, both as one of her longest-running projects, spanning the years 1973 to 2018, and as a series within a series. These are versions of a small wooden cupboard which she then painted in black, white or colour and which she also depicted in bronze from 1995. The cupboard is depicted closed, half-closed or open, with different types of recipients displayed on top of it. From the starting point of a realist composition, Laffón gradually incorporated a contemporary artistic language by locating the motif against a neutral background with increasingly blurred contours in which this piece of furniture does not cast a shadow and appears to float in space.

7. Whitewash

Laffón did not just paint standard exterior scenes but also focused on modest landscapes of haunting beauty. Created between 2011 and 2015, this series executed on large panels in oil, tempera and charcoal centres on the utensils and implements used by whitewashers working on an Andalusian farmhouse, such as paint drums, wheelbarrows, buckets and tables. Laffón chose to present the space without human figures, with the objects depicted life-size and from different angles. This gives these works a new significance and relevance, as well as a beauty that elevates them to the category of art, as evident in Whitewash. Drum and Blue Table (2013) and in the sculpture Drum and Wheelbarrow with Bucket of Whitewash (2012-2013).

8. Salt

Laffón’s last series, created between 2017 and 2020, centres on the white salt marshes of Bonanza near her home and studio in Sanlúcar. This is perhaps her most ambitious project, both in terms of the number of works and their large format, as well as the abstract nature of the compositions, a direction the artist had taken as her work developed. This room in the exhibition displays seven oil paintings, a delicate plaster bas-relief (Salt, 2019), and a small sculpture (Salt. Salt Mountain. 2020).

9. Vineyard (Main Hall)

The final section of the exhibition focuses on the series The Vineyard. Created between 2006 and 2007, it was first exhibited at the Santo Domingo de Silos Monastery and was inspired by the small vineyard that surrounded the artist’s studio in Sanlúcar, which she tended daily. Displayed in the Museum’s Central Hall are the four wooden panels that make up View of the Vineyard, alongside Baskets Loaded with Grapes (2006-2010), a monumental work in painted bronze, midway between sculpture and installation, consisting of 26 life-size baskets.

The exhibition concludes with an audiovisual on the artist, produced specially for this project and featuring the participation of art historians, artists and gallerists, including Jordi Teixidor, Estrella de Diego, Jacobo Cortínez, Íñigo Navarro and Juan Suárez.