words Al Woods
In you could take a trip in a time machine back to any era then surely the roaring twenties would be high up there as your first choice. There must have been a great sense of freedom as the dustiness of the nineteenth century was cast aside.
There was tremendous optimism in the air after overcoming the devastation of a world war and a terrible pandemic that had ravaged many countries across the world.
Guggenheim Museum Bilbao have announced a new exhibition The Roaring Twenties based around this pioneering era that helped shape the face of the modern world. It covers the art, the fashion, the new emerging lifestyle culture that all burst onto the scene at the time.
The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao presents The Roaring Twenties, sponsored by BBK, a stimulating tour through the ground-breaking 1920s through more than 300 objects representing the most important artistic disciplines of the time, from painting, sculpture, and drawing to photography, film, collage, architecture, fashion and furniture design.
The exhibition will introduce visitors’ European cities like Berlin, Paris, Vienna, and Zurich, where major changes and progress were occurring in all spheres, many of which can still be felt today. Even though we cannot compare 1:1 our decade with the 1920s, there surprisingly a lot of parallels, dominated by the trauma of a pandemic and a major recession due to World War I. Yet at the same time it was a decade of progress, with an explosion of creativity and freedom, so this glimpse into the past offers encouraging ideas and inspiration for the future.
The main new feature of this show is the pioneering collaboration between the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and renowned playwright and opera director Calixto Barito, who created an exhibition design to foster an enriching dialogue between the fine arts and the performing arts.
The exhibition takes place at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao from May 7 to September 19