The Kind Cruelty: León Ferrari, 100 Years, Exhibition, Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid: 16 December 2020-12 April 2021

 It displays a range of collages, drawings, sculptures,  videos and paintings, all of which reveal Ferrari’s formal, poetic, conceptual and political experimentation within his work. 

 There are a total of 219 unique copies of Ferrari’s objects and series on display, including the Justice/ 5th Centenary of the Discovery of America Installation. As well as the copies, there is a donation of 15 original works, including the Last Judgements from his Excrements collection. 

 León Ferrari, born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1920, was a plastic artist, who moved to Italy in 1952, where he began to work as a sculptor. When he returned to Argentina, he had to go into exile  in Brazil in 1976, from where he started to develop his paintings, drawings and collages. Only in 1991 did he return to his native country, where he was later awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. 

 He has won multiple awards for his work, including two Konex Awards for Merit in 1992 and a Diamond Konex Award in 2012. Importantly, however, his legacy is for creating works which criticise war, religion and intolerance. 

Ferrari died at the age of 92 in 2013. This exhibition, therefore, celebrates his life, with unpublished personal documents also on show, allowing you to delve into the thoughts and emotions of the artist in both his private and public life.