An art-filled spring
Spring 2026 arrives brimming with artistic highlights across Spain’s leading museums. Works by the likes of Vilhelm Hammershøi and Yuko Mohri will be shown in the country for the very first time, while others involve more familiar names, including Jasper Johns, Annie Leibovitz and Oliver Laxe.
Cover photo: Yuko Mohri, piano solo, Belle-Île, 2024. Photo by Agostino Osio.
Header: Green Target, 1959, by Jasper Johns. Louisiana Museum of Modern Art.
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1 "HU/هُوَ. Dance as if nobody is watching you" by Oliver Laxe in Madrid
Until 20 April, the Museo Reina Sofía presents HU/هُوَ. Dance as if nobody is watching you, an installation created especially for the museum by Oliver Laxe. The project stems from research and footage developed for his film Sirāt, awarded the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes 2025 and nominated for Best International Feature Film and Best Sound at the 2026 Academy Awards. The work inaugurates the new programme of Espacio 1 within the museum and unfolds across two galleries. In the first, homage is paid to rave culture through a pyramid of loudspeakers – also featured in the film – conceived as a kind of altar. The second and principal space presents an immersive installation of projected desert landscapes, where light and sound guide the viewer through a sensory experience that echoes Laxe’s creative universe. In doing so, the piece seeks to transpose the expressive tools of cinema into the exhibition space.
Oliver Laxe. Sirat, film, 2025 -
2 "Wonderland" by Annie Leibovitz, in A Coruña
Until 1 May, the Fundación Marta Ortega Pérez (MOP Foundation) in A Coruña hosts "Wonderland", a retrospective devoted to the work of Annie Leibovitz, one of the most influential fashion photographers in the world and recipient of the Prince of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities in 2013. Although this exhibition marks the first retrospective entirely dedicated to the American photographer in Spain, Leibovitz is already well known here, not least for her portraits of prominent national figures, from Penélope Cruz to the King and Queen of Spain. Wonderland brings together around 100 prints – some never before exhibited – featuring personalities such as Patti Smith, John Lennon, Bob Dylan and Mick Jagger.
Ben Stiller, Jacquetta Wheeler, Ai Tominaga, Karolina Kurkova, Oluchi Onweagba, and Stella Tennant, 'Paris', 2001. © Annie Leibovitz -
3 “Hammershøi: The listening eye”, in Madrid
Until 31 May, the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum presents Hammershøi: The listening eye, the first major retrospective in Spain devoted to Vilhelm Hammershøi. One of the most influential figures in Danish painting, the artist stands as a bridge between the 19th century and the early avant-garde of the 20th. Bringing together 90 works, the exhibition offers a window on the cool, austere interiors that define Hammershøi’s distinctive style. The subtitle alludes to the metaphorical relationship between the objects depicted in his paintings and the silence they convey, shaping an interpretation of the intimate and the domestic in which the painter’s wife, Ida Ilsted, assumes a central role.
Three young women, 1895 © Ribe Art Museum -
4 "Yuko Mohri: Entanglements" in Santander
From 28 March to 6 September, the Centro Botín presents Entanglements, the largest solo exhibition of Yuko Mohri’s work ever staged in Europe and her first in Spain. The Japanese artist explores the transformative potential of everyday objects and natural elements, and their capacity to generate both visual and sonic shifts. Her particular field of expertise lies in large-scale kinetic sculptures, composed of ephemeral assemblages and interconnected systems, through which she investigates the force of imperceptible phenomena such as magnetism, gravity and humidity. At the Centro Botín, works spanning from the early 2000s to her most recent creations will be on view, including some of her most celebrated pieces, among them Decomposition (2021–ongoing), originally presented at the Japan Pavilion of the 60th Venice Biennale.
Yuko Mohri You Locked Me Up in a Grave, You Owe Me at Least the Peace of a Grave, 2018. Photo: Agostino Osio -
5 “Jasper Johns: Night Driver”, in Bilbao
From 29 May to 12 October, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao presents Jasper Johns: Night Driver. The exhibition offers a comprehensive overview of the career of the American artist, who is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in post-war art in North America. Structured as a chronological journey, the show begins with his early flags and targets paintings of the 1950s and extends to works from the 2000s, including the Catenary series. Along the way, it traces the profoundly influential works of the 1960s, pivotal to the development of Pop Art, as well as the stylistic explorations that marked the 1970s and 1980s, revealing the evolving concerns of an artist who consistently redefined the language of contemporary painting.
Flags, 1987. Artist's collection © Jasper Johns, VEGAP, Bilbao, 2026 -
6 “Fardo by Andrea Canepa”, in Madrid
We close with an open-air artistic intervention set to remain on view throughout 2026. The Peruvian artist Andrea Canepa is the creator of Fardo, a vast canvas that will envelop the Palacio de Cristal in Madrid’s Retiro Park during its restoration works. Inspired by pre-Columbian funerary rites, the design wraps the building’s structure in a mosaic of textiles. Canepa’s intention is to pay tribute to the Paracas culture, which flourished in southern Peru between 800 and 100 BC, drawing on fardos – layered textile bundles used to shroud the dead. Thanks to the region’s arid climate, many of these intricate funerary wrappings have survived to the present day.
Fardo, by Andrea Canepa, in the Crystal Palace, inside El Retiro Park
