Michael Armitage at Calcografía Nacional, Madrid 2022

A new show of drawings and paintings by Michael Armitage, curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and organised by the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin, will open at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid this February. 

The exhibition follows in the wake of Armitage’s achievements in the UK, where he was recently elected Royal Academician in the category of painting at London’s Royal Academy of Arts. Bringing together works in oil on Lubugo bark cloth and ink on paper, the exhibition showcases Armitage’s haunting vignettes, pulled from real-life sources, many of which resonate with the museum’s collection of etchings by Francisco de Goya. Like Goya, Armitage subtly emphasises the humanity of his subjects and communicates the social backdrops to his scenes, sometimes documenting the atrocities of political struggle and tapping into a nightmarish world against reason.