"An era builds cities. An hour destroys them."

Águeda de la Pisa & David Beltrán

from May 26, 2026 to July 11, 2026

This project stems from the photographic gaze of two painters: Águeda de la Pisa (Spain, 1942) and David Beltrán (Cuba, 1978) towards two cities that have been a source of inspiration, Madrid and Havana.

Through the pictorial-geometric photography of de la Pisa and Beltrán, their works explore how urban distribution can be transformed into a visual language that inhabits the space between the real and the abstract.

Reality is emptied of content and reference when viewed from another perspective: scale, framing, rotation, or repetition alter the perception of the everyday, stripping the urban space of its recognisable identity. Thus, the city ceases to be a setting and becomes plastic material.

In this play of perspectives and visual pauses, an abstraction of reality is created from reality itself. Each image reveals a duality between what we see and what we believe we see, inviting the viewer to explore the boundary where photography becomes painting, and the city becomes geometry.

Águeda de la Pisa (Spain, 1942) is a well-known painter for her abstract works. She was part of the Ruedo Ibérico group, being the only woman among its members. She has gone through different stages of abstraction, using various techniques and investigating the possibilities of each one.

Her artistic career has been recognised with numerous awards, including the Castilla y León Arts Prize. In 2006, alongside her dedication to painting, she began to develop a series of works based on digital photographs, processing the images to the point of near abstraction and achieving highly personal results on paper. 

In the series Cielo Habitado (Inhabited Sky), he offers us an interesting discourse through which he invites us to reflect on cities that are destroyed as they are built, also expressing the correspondence between the big city and the devastation of nature.

David Beltrán (Cuba, 1978) is renowned for his unique career in contemporary Cuban art and his research into painting and the city. His professional experience and approach to work are marked by an almost archaeological exploration of the pictorial act and a critical view of the cities that inspire his works. Beltrán was a member of various artistic groups and collectives, experimenting with the interpretation of some ‘classic’ performances in art history, transforming an individual experience into a collective one. 

In 2007, he began working independently, researching the mediums of painting and photography. In his extensive photographic series Fragmentos de Infinito (Fragments of Infinity), he proposes a kind of ‘found painting.’ 

In 2016, he began his project Arqueología del Color (Archaeology of Colour) in conjunction with the National Museum of Fine Arts of Cuba.