First seen earlier this season at The Royal Academy of Arts in London, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao presents the first major exhibition in Spain to showcase David Hockney’s landscape work. Vivid paintings inspired by the Yorkshire countryside, many exhibited here for the first time, are shown alongside related drawings and digital video. Over 150 works are on display on the Bilbao Museum’s second floor, the majority of which have been created in the last eight years. The exhibition also includes a selection of works dating as far back as 1956, which places the recent work in the context of Hockney’s extended exploration of and fascination with landscape. Past works include Rocky Mountains and Tired Indians, 1965 (The National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh), Garrowby Hill , 1998 (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) and A Closer Grand Canyon, 1998 (Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek). Hockney’s exploration of the depiction of space is traced from work dating to his time as a student, through his photocollages of the 1980s and the Grand Canyon paintings of the late 1990s, to the recent paintings of East Yorkshire, frequently made en plein air .

The exhibition also shows David Hockney's interest in new technologies throughout his career: from his early use of the Polaroid camera, his innovative incorporation of the color copier and use of the iPhone and iPad; in addition, this interest is especially evident in a number of new films produced with up to 18 cameras, which are presented on multiple screens.

Curated by Álvaro Rodríguez Fominaya, Curator of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the exhibition features 93 photographs, paintings, publications, sculptures, installations and videos by 52 celebrated artists such as Antoni Tŕpies, Sigmar Polke, Julian Schnabel, Jeff Wall, Martha Rosler, Michelangelo Pistolletto, Thomas Ruff, Gillian Wearing, Bruce Nauman, Andreas Gursky, Martín Chirino and Antonio Saura, among others.

The exhibition is structured around the points of agreement and divergence between the Fundación "la Caixa" and MACBA collections and highlights the art movements that play an outstanding role in both collections, such as the beginning of Art Informel in Spain and the establishment of objectivity as a current in contemporary photography.

The exhibition title derives from Michelangelo Pistoletto's work Mirror Architecture, which is featured in the show. The image of a mirror is a metaphor for the processes of accumulation, transfer and interference that are a fundamental part of the birth and development of all art collections. In connection with its title, the show highlights two contemporary art collections located in Barcelona.