Banco Santander Collection

All collections tell stories, and this one tells several at once. For its presentation at Faro Santander, the Banco Santander Collection is offering a completely new narrative, curated by María Dolores Jiménez-Blanco, spanning almost five centuries: from Lucas Cranach the Elder’s Sermon of Saint John the Baptist (c. 1537–40) to the Santander-born Juan Uslé’s I dreamt you revealed (2018). Between these two extremes, artists and images of various periods and styles come together to reveal the guiding principles of a many-sided collection.

The display is divided into four themed sections: Sacred Stories; Portraits, Types and Figures; Things: Still Lifes; and Places and Landscapes.  They express and explore the presence of the supernatural and the concrete materiality of people, objects and spaces through very different artistic sensibilities.

The selection of works features many of the leading names commonly acknowledged by art history as essential touchstones, from Titian, El Greco, Velázquez, Goya, Picasso and Miró to José Guerrero, Manuel Millares, Soledad Sevilla, Susana Solano, Richard Long and Juan Muñoz. This is a star-studded line-up indeed, but the presence of these artists in the Banco Santander Collection – which should also be viewed from the heritage perspective of a collection assembled by a bank – additionally sheds light on the institution’s own history, as together these works constitute its repository of memory.

The Baroque and the contemporary are paired at the entrance to this exhibition: works by Rubens, Tàpies and Ángela de la Cruz highlight the diversity visitors will find as they walk round and the ways – possibly unexpected – these pieces relate to one another.

Four perspectives on the Banco Santander Collection

The exhibition is structured around four main themes: Sacred Stories; Places and Landscapes; Things: Still Lifes; and Portraits, Types and Figures. Through these themes, paintings and other works from the Banco Santander Collection establish connections between artists, periods and different artistic sensibilities.

Sacred Stories explores spirituality and mystery through artists such as Titian, El Greco, Velázquez, Zurbarán, Chillida, Tàpies and Torner. Places and Landscapes explores different ways of representing nature, from the views of Canaletto and Beruete to the abstract approaches of Chirino, Guerrero, Soledad Sevilla and Cristina Iglesias.

From still life to portraiture

The exhibition continues with a selection of still lifes that traces the evolution of the genre from the Baroque period to the late 20th century, featuring works by Juan de Arellano, Luis Meléndez, Luis Gordillo and Miquel Barceló.

The exhibition concludes with portraiture as a reflection of changes in society and in the ways individuals have been represented. The formality of Van Dyck and Giuseppe Bonito thus sits alongside the more individual perspectives of artists such as Francisco de Goya, Sorolla, Miró, Millares, Equipo Crónica and Niki de Saint Phalle.