Zóbel. The Future of the Past, an exhibit featuring the works of Fernando Zóbel de Ayala y Montojo, opened on 14 November 2022 at the Prado Museum.
Fernando Zóbel was an abstract painter with ties to both the Philippines and Spain. He has exhibited his works in the US, the Philippines and Spain. He founded the Museum of Spanish Abstract Art in the Hanging Houses in Cuenca, Spain, as well as the Ateneo Art Gallery in Manila. He taught art classes in Ateneo de Manila University. Mr. Zóbel donated his collection of paintings by Spanish abstract painters to Cuenca’s Museum of Spanish Abstract Art. Mr. Zóbel passed on in 1984 in Rome.
Mr. Zóbel’s family, Mr. Fernando Zóbel de Ayala and his wife Catherine Silverio Zóbel, as well as Philippine Ambassador to Spain Philippe J. Lhuillier attended the exhibit opening.
The exhibit is composed of Forty-two paintings, fifty-one sketchbooks and eighty-five drawings and graphic works loaned from collections in Spain, the Philippines and the USA, and will be on exhibit until 05 March 2023. Felipe Pereda, Fernando Zóbel de Ayala Professor of Spanish Art at the University of Harvard, and Manuel Fontán del Junco, director of Museums and Exhibitions at Fundación Juan March were the curators of the exhibit.