The FCM opens 'Canciones del alma. Encarnadura y misterio' by Alberto Corazón
The Fundación César Manrique inaugurates an exhibition where Alberto Corazón engages in a visual dialogue with the poetry of San Juan de la Cruz, interpreting his poem Noche oscura through eight large-format compositions.
- Date
- Monday, 1 June 2026
- Time
- 19:30
- Location
- To be confirmed
- Municipality
- Arrecife
- Price
- To be confirmed
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 enters into a dialogue with the Discalced Carmelite poet San Juan de la Cruz, creating a visual interpretation of his poem Noche oscura. The opening takes place at 19:30 in the Sala Taro at the institution's headquarters (Taro de Tahíche), followed by a reception in the gardens. Free entry, no booking required.
The exhibition, on view until 2 November 2026, presents the series of drawings by Alberto Corazón (Madrid, 1942 – 2021) titled Canciones del alma, based on the eight songs of Noche oscura composed by San Juan de la Cruz (Ávila, 1542 – Jaén, 1591), expressing the soul's joy at "having reached the high state of perfection, which is union with God, through the path of spiritual negation." The eight centrepieces are accompanied by thirteen drawings and six sculptures — on loan from Ana Arambarri, custodian of the Corazón/Arambarri legacy — linked to the visual language employed in the works.
In his visual reinterpretation of Noche oscura, Corazón creates eight large-format compositions on paper corresponding to the eight songs of the mystic. Where the poet adopts the lira as a common metrical form to weave a unified fabric, the painter organises his visual poems as a symbolic sequence of eight doors reduced to their threshold, framed by jambs and lintels. Across the openings he scatters his logo-iconic discourse: the calligraphic verses of San Juan treated as images, spare pictograms from his established visual vocabulary, and symbols corresponding to Sanjuanista mysticism — houses, leaves, vessels, ziggurats, grilles, ladders.
"My intention was to transpose what the text and the poetry are into the plastic arts," 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 verbal."