THE OCCULT IN THE THYSSEN-BORNEMISZA COLLECTIONS 1 July to 24 September 2023 Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza

The Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy defines occult sciences as “mysterious practices and knowledge, such as magic, alchemy, astrology, etc, which have aimed since antiquity to penetrate and master the secrets of nature.” More precisely, the occult tradition could be said to be based on three premises: 1. The transmission since ancient times of a secret knowledge only accessible to a few initiates; 2. The correspondences between different parts of the universe (elements, planets, temperaments, etc) within the context of a fundamental correspondence between macrocosmos and microcosms; 3. The existence of certain superpowers latent in human beings which must be employed in order to lead us to a spiritual metamorphosis or transmutation.

Occult knowledge has survived for centuries in a hostile cultural climate - dominated firstly by hegemonic religion and later by rationalism and positivism -thanks to its capacity for camouflage and infiltration. It is in the visual arts that esoteric ideas and beliefs have found the ideal terrain for their codified messages: from Renaissance hermetic allegories to the manifestations of 20thcentury avant-garde art. This exhibition, which benefits from the collaboration of the Comunidad de #madrid and is curated by #guillermosolana, brings together fifty-nine works of art from the ThyssenBornemisza collections (including both the museum’s permanent collection and the Carmen Thyssen collection) which reveal demonstrable signs of the occult.

The esoteric tradition offers us a series of codes with which to decipher hidden meanings. Its importance lies in the fact that
it reveals details and aspects of works of art that have previously gone unnoticed, offering new and heterodox readings.