After a fruitful and rewarding closing ceremony at the MUN Bilbao, the Year 12 students visited one of the city’s main tourist attractions: the Guggenheim. The building was designed by the prominent architect Frank Gehry, who is well-known for personalising his work, and for incorporating new shapes and materials in his buildings; a feature which can be observed in the Guggenheim Bilbao.
Inside the idiosyncratic building, the Year 12 students were able to walk through the popular labyrinthine sculptures known as The Matter of Time, created by the American minimalist sculptor Richard Serra. They also contemplated and admired the work of Alberto Giacometti, who was a key player in the Surrealist art movement. Some of his most famous sculptures are displayed in Bilbao and these include ‘The Pointing Man’ (1947) and ‘The Walking Man’ (1961). The students enjoyed the ‘One hundred and fifty Multicolored Marilyns’ which was made by the renowned artist Andy Warhol, and equally appreciated the work of Mark Rothko.
On the third floor, the Guggenheim’s Thannhauser Collection provides an important survey of the avant-garde of late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century France, beginning with Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, Vincent van Gogh, and others who sought to liberate art from academic genres, and who embraced modern subject matters and techniques.
Overall, the Year 12 students really enjoyed the visit and were amazed by the permanent and temporary collections.