Juan Uslé. Ese barco en la montaña, gran antológica del artista que recorre cuatro décadas de su trabajo

Museo Reina Sofía director, Manuel Segade, presented yesterday Juan Uslé. That Ship on the Mountain, a survey, running from 26 November 2025 to 20 April 2026 on Floor 1 of the Nouvel Building, centred on four decades of work by Juan Uslé, one of the foremost artists in Spain and internationally. Uslé attended the presentation alongside the show’s curator, Ángel Calvo Ulloa.

Juan Uslé. That Ship on the Mountain sets forth a circular route across eleven rooms, where the chronological and the discursive engage in dialogue in a progression shaped by formal diversity. The work of this artist, born in Santander in 1954 and residing between his native Cantabria and New York, is characterised by the constant exploration of lyrical abstraction, by paintings which become rhythm, respiration and memory in the articulation of a deeply intimate visual language that oscillates between the gestural and the geometrical. 

The proposed exhibition route connects the artist’s life with his work, drawing parallels between periods and families, the latter a term Uslé habitually employs for the different series of works he creates. Although seemingly disparate, these series still maintain coherence in the intention with which they have been made, demonstrating the versatility of this great artist. 

This is the second show devoted to Juan Uslé in the Museo Reina Sofía, with the first, Open Rooms, held in 2003 in the Palacio de Velázquez. Twenty years later, a fresh gaze settles on a key contemporary painter, the winner of Spain’s National Prize for Plastic Arts in 2002. 

The Museo has published a catalogue with texts written by Ángel Calvo Ulloa, Érik Bullot and Andrea Soto Calderón and featuring periodic conversations between Juan Uslé and Kevin Power from 2000 to 2003. 

“Exhibition organised by the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía”

Further information on the full press release.