The Fundación César Manrique (FCM) opens on Thursday 4 June an exhibition by artist Alberto Corazón titled Canciones del alma. Encarnadura y misterio, in which the painter engages in a dialogue with the Discalced Carmelite poet San Juan de la Cruz, creating a visual interpretation of his poem Noche oscura. The opening begins at 19:30 in the Sala Taro — located at the institution's headquarters (Taro de Tahíche) — followed by a reception in the gardens. Admission is free and no prior booking is required.
The exhibition, on view until 2 November 2026, showcases the series of drawings by Alberto Corazón (Madrid, 1942 – 2021) titled Canciones del alma, based on the eight songs of the Noche oscura composed by San Juan de la Cruz (Ávila, 1542 – Jaén, 1591), where he expresses the soul's joy at "having reached the high state of perfection, which is the union with God, through the path of spiritual negation". The eight central pieces are accompanied by thirteen drawings and six sculptures — on loan from Ana Arambarri, manager of the Corazón/Arambarri estate — linked to the visual language of the works. The selection and exhibition design were overseen by Fernando Gómez Aguilera, director of the FCM and a renowned expert on the Madrid artist's work, having curated exhibitions of his work at the IVAM in Valencia and in Damascus, Amman and Tehran through SEACEX.
In his visual reinterpretation of the Noche oscura, Corazón creates eight large-format compositions on paper corresponding to the eight songs of the mystic. Just as the poet adopts the lira as a common metrical form to weave a unified fabric, the painter organises, in his visual poems, a symbolic sequence of eight doors reduced to their openings, defined by jambs and lintels. Over the void of the opening, he disperses his logo-iconic discourse: the calligraphic verses of San Juan treated as images, and spare pictograms drawn from his usual visual vocabulary, whilst establishing correspondences with the symbolism of San Juan's mysticism (houses, leaves, vessels, ziggurats, grilles, ladders...).
"My intention was to transpose what the text and the poetry are into the visual realm," the artist commented in 2012. "In writing, the word is an essential element of Western culture's iconography, and I wanted to attempt integrating the visual and the word." He sought, in short, to give iconicity to writing, placing words, strokes and symbols — as well as emotions — at the centre of his visual narrative.
According to Gómez Aguilera, "the integration of text and iconography amalgamated on the same surface was a constant in Corazón's creative practice." The exhibition's curator notes that for the artist, "the stroke that draws and the stroke that writes share the same biological basis and a common symbolic projection." He adds: "Alberto Corazón understood drawing as word and writing as drawing, because ultimately his entire creative life — as painter, sculptor, graphic and industrial designer — consisted of working with signs. Hence his suggestion that we read his drawings and understand his strokes."
The eight works in the Canciones del alma series were first exhibited in the lower cloister of Burgos Cathedral between May and September 2009, having been painted in the first two months of that year. They were subsequently shown in Úbeda, at the Hospital de Santiago, during the last month of the year. Through the IVAM and the Instituto Cervantes, they travelled to Stockholm (2011), Naples (2012), Milan (2012) and Rome (2012), presented under the title Oscuro es el canto. In early 2015, the works were exhibited at the Sala Rafael Botí in Torrelodones, Madrid. The artist donated the works to the Fundación César Manrique in 2020, and they are now shown for the first time, accompanied by complementary pieces.
Alberto Corazón was a painter, sculptor and graphic designer. In the 1970s, he began producing work linked to conceptualism. Throughout the 70s and 80s, he focused on graphic and industrial design, fields in which he enjoyed extraordinary international prestige. In the 90s, he resumed his creative activity with a vengeance, producing paintings and sculptures of strong symbolic character. In the late 90s, he proposed a contemporary reading of the still life and explored a synthetic approach to landscape painting. He was the creator of the corporate identity and the entire editorial line of the FCM.