Art and culture
Anders Zorn
Midnight, 1891
© Zornmuseet, Mora
FEB.19.2026 – MAY.17.2026, MAD
Anders Zorn
Traveling the World, Remembering the Land
Coming from a humble rural background, Swedish artist Anders Zorn (1860-1920) achieved international fame as a portraitist of kings, politicians, and other celebrities of his time.
This exhibition presents a comprehensive overview of his work, a long and rich career in which his interest in portraying both the features of modernity and scenes characteristic of traditional life in his native region complemented his work as a portraitist.
Helen Levitt
New York, c. 1940
© Film Documents LLC, courtesy Zander Galerie, Cologne
FEB.19.2026 – MAY.17.2026, MAD
Helen Levitt
Helen Levitt (1913–2009) began photographing her native New York in the late 1930s, capturing images that reflected life in the poorest neighborhoods and, in particular, children and their street games. She did so with a special instinct for conveying the emotion, mystery, and humor contained in those childhood scenes.
Her work soon received the recognition it deserved, and in 1943 the Museum of Modern Art in New York organized her first solo exhibition. Deeply committed to social causes, Levitt was one of the first women to carve out a professional path in photography. The nearly 200 photographs featured in this exhibition offer a comprehensive journey through her entire career.
Walker Evans
Subway Passengers, New York, 1938
Vintage gelatin silver print
Private Collection, San Francisco
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
FEB.26.2026 – MAY.24.2026, BCN
Walker Evans
Now and Then
In 2009, Fundación Mapfre inaugurated its photography exhibition program with a major retrospective dedicated to Walker Evans (1903–1975). Sixteen years later, Walker Evans. Now and Then presents a new reading of the work of one of the most influential photographers of the twentieth century, a key figure in shaping the modern documentary gaze. The exhibition brings together a broad selection of images that highlight the enduring relevance of his sensibility: portraits of anonymous individuals, street scenes, sober architectural studies, and photographs of urban signs that reveal the visual culture of his time. The exhibition path proposes an updated perspective on the way Evans observed and understood his surroundings, articulating a direct, reflective, and lyrical vision that continues to inspire generations of artists and to shape the way we understand documentary photography.
Carlos Pérez Siquier
Marbella, 1974
Fundación Mapfre Collections
© Pérez Siquier, VEGAP, Barcelona, 2026
FEB.26.2026 – MAY.24.2026, BCN
Pérez Siquier
Fundación Mapfre Collections
Centered on a key figure in the modernization of Spanish photography, this exhibition offers—through a significant selection of works from the Fundación Mapfre Collections—a journey through the series that defined the career of Carlos Pérez Siquier (1930–2021): from the documentary force of La Chanca, through the revitalizing drive of Almerian Photographic Association (AFAL), to his bold leap into color with Informalisms, The Beach, and Traps for the Unwary. It also includes his later projects, Encounters and La Briseña, where his gaze takes on a more introspective tone. Together, these works allow us to rediscover one of the most influential photographers in the visual transformation of 20th‑century Spain—a creator who observed his surroundings with a free, critical, and deeply poetic sensitivity.
Sakiko Nomura
Naked time 053, 1997
©Sakiko Nomura courtesy of Akio Nagasawa Gallery
Sakiko Nomura
– 31
Centro Cultural Antiguo Instituto Jovellanos (Gijón, Asturias)
Night. Nudity. Blur.
The Japanese photographer Sakiko Nomura (1967) worked for twenty years as an assistant to Nobuyoshi Araki (Tokyo, 1940), one of Japan’s best-known photographers. Beginning in 1993, the artist exhibited regularly in Japan and other Asian countries, as well as in Europe and Mexico. Alongside her images, photobooks make up a large body of her work; to date she has published thirty-four.
The cover of Nomura’s first book, Naked Room, published in 1994, features the blurred profile of the torso of a nude young man. These are some of the characteristics that would come to define her work from that time on. By focusing on the male body, Nomura subverts the conventions of nude photography—generally produced by men—and challenges the stereotypes of a long-standing tradition deeply rooted in both the West and the East, and particularly in Japan.
Drawn to darkness as the reverse of light, Nomura’s photographs are shaped by night and shadow, dim light, and blurring, as if the artist were searching for a way out, or for a light at the end of the journey.
Nicholas Nixon
Bebe, Cambridge, 1980
Fundación Mapfre Collections
© Nicholas Nixon
Nicholas Nixon. Fundación Mapfre Collections
– 28
Sala Rekalde (Bilbao, Vizcaya)
Portraiture. Simplicity. Emotion.
Nicholas Nixon (Detroit, Michigan, 1947) occupies a prominent place in recent photographic history. Focused primarily on portraiture, and with a clear interest in the camera’s descriptive possibilities, his work reveals a tension between the visible, the subject matter, and the invisible, the thoughts and concerns that surface in his images.
His series explore singular worlds with notable social awareness. Slowness, extended periods of time, and the absence of dramatic elements are the hallmarks of his work. Nixon employs a simple, almost obsolete yet impeccable technique, using large-format cameras that require proximity and cooperation from his sitters in order to portray the intimate worlds on which he fixes his gaze: the elderly, the sick, the intimacy of couples, and family life.
In his photographs we find a clear guiding thread and an extraordinary capacity for renewal. They lead us from cool urban views of New York and Boston in the 1970s to the celebrated The Brown Sisters series, one of the most perceptive reflections on the passage of time in the history of photography.
Raimundo de Madrazo
Muchachas en la ventana (Young women at the window), c. 1875
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Collection, bequest of Catharine Lorillard Wolfe, 1887, inv. 87.15.131.
Photo credit: © The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource/Scala, Florence
Raimundo de Madrazo
– 21
Elegance. Tradition. Mastery.
The work of Raimundo de Madrazo (Rome, 1841 – Versailles, 1920), regarded in his time as a symbol of elegance, emulation of the past, and respect for tradition, established him as a central figure on the artistic scene and in the most distinguished and international social circles of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Over time, however, and with the emergence of new artistic movements, his oeuvre was relegated to the margins of later art-history narratives.
Together with Mariano Fortuny and Eduardo Zamacois, Raimundo de Madrazo specialized in small-format paintings, which were highly appreciated by the general public of the period. Art ceased to be merely a private concern of the monarchy and aristocracy and became a matter “for everyone.”
Raimundo de Madrazo’s work can be categorized as juste milieu painting, produced between 1830 and 1848 and representative of mainstream taste. As a result, he enjoyed considerable commercial and critical success during the second half of the 19th century. However, his decline was as swift as his rise had been, and only recently has his work begun to receive the recognition it deserves.
Graciela Iturbide
Mujer ángel (Angel woman), Sonora Desert, Mexico. 1979
Fundación Mapfre Collections
© Graciela Iturbide
Graciela Iturbide. Fundación Mapfre Collections
– 07
San Diego Museum of Art (San Diego, USA)
Mystical. Social. Poetic.
Graciela Iturbide (Mexico City, 1942) is one of the most prominent Mexican photographers on the international contemporary scene. Her entirely unique body of work is key to understanding the development of photography in Mexico and throughout Latin America.
Straddling the documentary and the poetic, her singular gaze brings together lived experience and dreams in a complex web of historical, social, and cultural references. Her work is characterized by an ongoing dialogue between images, times, and symbols, in a poetic unfolding where dreams, rituals, religion, travel, and community come together.
Celebrated for her portraits of the Seri people, for her vision of the women of Juchitán, and for her fascinating long-term study of birds, Graciela Iturbide’s visual journey has taken her beyond her native Mexico to countries as diverse as Spain, the United States, India, Italy, and Madagascar.
Her talent for framing what draws her attention can produce an almost mystical vision of the everyday; at other times, it brings us to the very heart of crucial issues in our society.
