Isabel Coixet. Collages

The museum is presenting a selection of around fifty collages by the film director and screenwriter Isabel Coixet (born 1960). Curated by Estrella de Diego, the exhibition is part of the PhotoEspaña 2025 programme. 

Isabel Coixet has been working for years on collages made from paper and photographs that are reminiscent of the preparatory shots employed by some Hollywood directors, who left nothing to chance. There is a continuity between what Coixet demands from the viewer in her films and the narrative place in which her collages locate visitors to the exhibition. These are works that connect with the great avant-garde tradition of this art form - from Hanna Höch to Kurt Schwitters - and also associate Coixet with a certain precariousness, with a way of working with little which she also pursues in her films. 

In Coixet’s words: "There are stories constructed from scraps and fragments. They expect and require the viewer to make the effort to fill the gaps which the narrative leaves in its wake in order to recompose and understand them. Cinema knows a lot about this: it’s not enough to just watch, there has to be room for conclusions." It is here that we also find the essence of collage, which acquires meaning through the images, objects and materials of which it is composed.