Cai Guo-Qiang’s Gunpowder Art: The Spirit of Painting

Abstract

Abstract                                                                                                   

Towards the end of 2017 a series of works by Cai Guo-Qiang were exhibited in the Museo del Prado in Spain. The exhibition caused great attention not only as a result of the ceaseless irruption of the contemporay art in this museum, but also as a result of the dialogue between Guo-Qiang and some artists whose works are part of the museum’s permanent collection. This link with the tradition allowed him to show, paradoxically, his iconoclastic nature, a characteristic shared with other artists of his own generation as Ai Wei-Wei or Wang Guangyi. Random and controlled at once, Guo Qiang’s gunpowder art dialogues with the Western tradition. In this sense, and for this specific exhibition, he recreated the painting of Goya, El Bosco, Rubens, Tintoretto, Velázquez and, firstly, El Greco, in a personal, contemporary way.