Thyssen: The Ninth Passenger. Encounters with comic artists. In conversation with Elisa McCausland and Diego Salgado

As a medium, the comic derives from a parallel tradition of illustration and the visual arts which socially and culturally defined the 19th century, one of the key periods in the Thyssen collections. In turn, the late 20th and early 21st centuries saw the emergence of tools and resources deriving from graphic design and the multi-media which stimulated fundamental changes in the medium.

Guest: Ana Penyas, creator of We’re all fine (2017) and Everything under the sun (2021). Recipient of the National Comic Prize 2018.

As revealed in the work of Berthe Morisot, Gabriele Münter, Sonia Delaunay and Maruja Mallo, between the late 19th and mid-20th centuries the visual arts expressed to varying degrees women artists’ concerns in relation to the achievements of the first wave of feminism. In turn, the 21st-century comic has provided an ideal platform for giving voice to successive generations of women comic artists and for the creation of international support networks. This session establishes a genealogy between women “old masters” and contemporary women artistic creators.

Guest: Laura Pérez Vernetti. Creator of The Trap (1990), The black cat’s sheen (2008) and Eight poems (2016). Grand Prix for her career at the Salón del Cómic de Barcelona 2018.

High and low culture. Doomsayers and conformists... Introduction to the approach of these sessions through a reassessment of the artists who have been associated with the comic in different ways. From Lyonel Feininger to Keith Haring and including Roy Lichtenstein.

Guest: Daniel Torres, creator of Opium (1982), The house (2015) and The future that never was (2021), among others. Grand Prix for his career at the Salón Internacional del Cómic de Barcelona 2022.

Avant-garde tendencies in the evolution of painting and comics: from George Herriman’s Sunday strips to Sergio García and including Cliff Sterret and the Cubist artists represented in the Thyssen collections.

Guest: Sergio García, creator of the album Utopia (1996), the essay How to make a comic (2006), and front covers for The New Yorker and El País Semanal. Recipient of the National Illustration Prize 2022.

The interpretation of the human body and its textures in painting and comics provokes numerous questions regarding reality, representation and the comparison between painters such as Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud and comic artists such as Bill Sienkiewicz and Guido Crepax.

Guest: Ana Miralles. Artist of the internationally successful comic Djinn, with text by Jean Dufaux. Grand Prix for her career at the Salón del Cómic de Barcelona 2019.

Expression and narrative are essential aspects for understanding the nature of media such as painting and comics. The way in which they look to each other through the handling of colour and spaces is visible in the work of great masters of paintings such as Edward Hopper and Paul Delvaux and comic artists such as David Mazzucchelli and Chris Ware.

Guest: Paco Roca. Recipient of the National Comic Prize 2008 and the Eisner Prize 2020.