TMoCA to unveil Picasso-led Spanish modernist showcase in ‘Art & War’ series
Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art (TMoCA) will open a new chapter of its ‘Art & War’ program on May 11, featuring 11 works by leading Spanish modernist painters including Pablo Picasso, Antoni Tàpies, Robert Motherwell and Juan Gris, as the capital’s premier museum expands its internationally focused examination of war’s imprint on modern art.
The exhibition, titled ‘Eleven Artworks by Spanish Modernist Painters,’ runs from May 11 to May 19 at the museum’s main hall and draws exclusively from TMoCA’s celebrated collection, one of the most significant repositories of Western modern art outside Europe and North America.
The showcase revisits how conflict, political turbulence and social upheaval reverberated through 20th-century Spanish art, bringing together works associated with Cubism, abstraction and postwar modernism. Museum organizers said the exhibition seeks to deepen public engagement with the visual language artists employed to confront war, displacement and historical rupture.
The event follows the opening phase of TMoCA’s broader ‘Art & War’ initiative, which previously highlighted works by major international pop art figures including Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Indiana and James Rosenquist from May 3 to 10.
That exhibition explored art’s “reflective” and “resistant” role during periods of global conflict and drew attention to the museum’s expanding international cultural outreach.
By turning the spotlight onto Spanish modernism, the latest installment widens the historical and geographical scope of the series while reinforcing Tehran’s role as a regional platform for cross-cultural artistic dialogue.