04 October, 2019 - 27 October, 2019
Palacete del Embarcadero, Santander
Curated: Luis Sazatornil

Today, in the midst of the twenty-first century, digital technology allows viewers to ‘travel’ virtually through far-off cities and to be enthralled by detailed urban renderings of the digital age. Nevertheless, the allure of representing cities has a long tradition. Indeed, Renaissance experiments with visual perspective marked the birth of city portraits as a clearly-defined artistic genre, spurred on since the mid-sixteenth century by the evolution of the printing press, geographical curiosity and the commercial dissemination of city books. Against this backdrop, in which urban images of Europe in the Middle Ages thrived, ‘exotic’ Spanish cities were relentlessly re-examined, creating a repertoire of urban panoramas based on the gaze of the outsider: the traveller, the editor or the foreign artist. (...)