This spring, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao – the cultural and artistic centre that is the backbone of the Bilbao scene – will premiere the latest works exploring Latin American art, drawing and engraving, installations, AI, video art and contemporary art. Until the end of 2025, you can enjoy the Works from the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao Collection exhibition, a retrospective of crucial moments in art history following World War II through to works from the museum’s own collection by artists such as Yayoi Kusama and Jeff Koons. 

Among the highlights is the Tarsila do Amaral: Painting Modern Brazil exhibition, dedicated to one of the most influential artists in the history of Latin American art. A pioneer of the modernist style, Tarsila do Amaral served as a bridge between São Paulo and Paris, reinterpreting avant-garde movements such as Cubism and basing her art on the search for the authentic Brazil and the recovery of the roots of local culture, founding what is known as the Anthropophagic movement. The exhibition, which has been organised in collaboration with the GrandPalaisRmn, can be visited until 1 June.

Another major opening is in situ: Refik Anadol, from 7 March to 19 October. On this occasion, the Turkish-American artist will present an installation called Living Architecture where – thanks to images and archival materials – he explores the work of the architect Frank Gehry using forms generated by AI. The installation, for which a special soundscape has been composed that includes recordings of material from the museum, offers experiential and immersive art: AI processes the data that Refik Anadol has extracted to – as explained by the Guggenheim – “generate visual compositions in permanent evolution, creating works of art that are not static, but are in perpetual transformation”.

Also at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, in March and April you can enjoy Masterpieces on Paper from Budapest, an analysis of the role of drawing and engraving in art history thanks to 150 pieces by masters such as Da Vinci, Rembrandt, Rubens, Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec and Schiele.

The Bilbao Fine Arts Museum adds the Max Ernst: Paris, 1922-1928 exhibition to its programme. This has been made possible thanks a private collection being loaned to the museum for the next five years. Visitors to the exhibition can enjoy 20 early works by the German artist – one of the masters of Surrealism – produced between 1922 and 1928. The occasion is unique in Spain, as currently only the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum and the Reina Sofia Museum have works by Ernst, with a total of just six exhibited throughout Spain. Meanwhile, the popular Juan Manuel Lumbreras gallery in Bilbao will host the works of artists Tadanori Yamaguchi and Alejandro González Osés from 6 March to 25 April. Yamaguchi, a Japanese sculptor based in Spain, has made stone his main working material, chiselling a very special use of light into it. Gonzáles Osés, a very young abstract painter based in Bilbao, offers a geometric vision of painting in formats such as canvases or murals.

This spring, the Guggenheim Bilbao Museum will also host musical art: on Saturday, 8 March, singer-songwriter María José Llergo will perform in the museum’s iconic atrium. The artist – one of the most sensitive and special voices in Spain – released her album Ultrabelleza last year on a tour of the United States, earning 34th place on the list of ‘Best Spanish Albums of 2023’ by Rolling Stone magazine. In addition, Morad will arrive in Bilbao on 26 April after conquering Europe on a tour that has taken him to London, Paris, Milan, Oslo and Copenhagen, among other capitals. The rapper will perform on 26 April at the Bizkaia Arena BEC in what will be one of the last dates of his tour in Spain. In addition, the legendary punk and ska band Talco will arrive in Bilbao to celebrate their 20th anniversary on 11 April. Performers of such iconic songs as ‘Bella Ciao’, they will perform in the Santana 27 performance hall accompanied by another legendary band, Boikot.

Impressive venues such as the Arriaga Theatre – a 19th-century Neo-Baroque building – will host a theatrical programme that includes titles such as Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, the American playwright’s first major success. In an adaptation directed by Natalia Menéndez, the play can be enjoyed in Spanish from 3-6 April with staging that aims to provide a vision of the American 1930s with actors such as Mikel Losada and Miren Gaztañaga. On 15-16 April, the Sala BBK will host Cinco Golondrinas under the direction of Rakel R. R. from the company Arymux, taking an approach to disability based on fiction, where one speaks “through the senses – or the absence of them – of the experience of the everyday, questioning veiled, subtle or explicit forms of discrimination”.