"Love art; among all lies, it is the least untruthful" is the quote by Gustave Flaubert that presides, like a silent warning, over the entrance to the new grand venture of the European Museum of Modern Art (MEAM) in Barcelona. REALISM 2026 | Figure and Time is not just an exhibition; it is a thermometer. An attempt to measure the pulsations of international figuration at a time when the image —omnipresent, generated, filtered— seems to have lost its anchor with the physical.
The exhibition, which can be visited until May 17, unfolds in the halls of the Gomis Palace as a complex and colorful map of international contemporary figuration, bringing together more than fifty voices that, under the umbrella of realism, explore the tensions of the body and memory. What greets the visitor is a sense of disorder, an eclecticism that, far from being a curatorial error, is perceived as a total and absolute declaration of intent. It is a chaos that, analyzed through the prism of 2026, functions as a deliberate response to a world saturated with overstimulation, where identity is constructed through dispersed fragments and crossed narratives.
It is, in essence, a contemporary salon that pays tribute to those Paris Salons of the 19th century, where the mix of styles and personal languages coexisted in the same space, forcing the eye to jump from one sensibility to another without a safety net. At MEAM, this eclecticism becomes a slide of the now, a demonstration that the good health of figuration lies, precisely, in its ability to embrace divergence without losing the coherence of the craft.
Realism is often associated with a search for perfect mimesis, a copy of reality. But what REALISM 2026 puts on the table is that figuration is not a destination, but a language. In this jungle of proposals, the viewer is forced to constantly recalibrate their gaze, moving from the meticulousness of detail to the power of gesture. It is revealing to observe how the exhibition moves away from the theatrics of prefabricated art to reclaim the intrinsic value of human time.
Not everyone in the art world needs abstraction to be modern; one can be a realist and possess a disruptive, and, above all, honest style. Rebellion today consists, precisely, in being oneself in a market that insists on pursuing the homogeneity of copies.
Within this vast mosaic of influences and genres, some pieces manage to stop the visual noise to establish a direct dialogue with the viewer. Exit Music, by Sebas Velasco, stands out as one of the most magnetic proposals. It is a nocturnal painting that transcends technique to place itself in an aesthetic close to current fashion editorials or the cover of an alternative music album. It possesses that cinematic and urban atmosphere that defines the feeling of a generation. In his brushstroke, the artist anchors a testimony in his physical and emotional circumstance, capturing the now with a precision that does not require forced hyperrealism.
In a contrast of intention, but not of equally enveloping quality, we find Picnight by Diego Vallejo. The work functions as an almost intimate record; it looks like a random photograph you take of your friends during a night gathering in the countryside. The interesting thing about this piece is its ability to integrate the observer into a "blind field," making them feel that they occupy one more place within the painting. Here, figuration moves away from the academic pose to seek an everyday truth, a pause in the continuous line of time.
The tour through the rooms also allows us to trace the footprint of art history, reminding us that realism is a known mountain that always harbors new paths. The Self-portrait by Martin Barbero stands as a bridge to Spanish tradition, with an inspiration that inevitably refers to the light and facture of Mariano Fortuny. It is an exercise in introspection where technique is placed at the service of the artist's psychology.
And, on the other hand, the Anglo-Saxon tradition has its space with Seasons: my son, my husband and my father-in-law by Frances Bell. It is a classic English portrait in its purest sense; a work that complies with the canons of elegance and academic composition, offering a counterpoint of stability against the more daring proposals in the room. It is figuration as a family and temporal record, with no other pretension than to honor lineage and form.
The exhibition flirts with the dreamlike in pieces such as Abyss by Miles Johnston, whose aesthetic approaches a Magrittian surrealism. Johnston plays on that liminal border between conscious reality and the unconscious, reminding us that the body is a great symbol, a resonating box where experiences and secrets are stored that only art can help decipher.
One of the most interesting moments of the tour occurs in the juxtaposition of two canvases that share female protagonism. In one, the calm of the sunset reigns, with warm tones, soft shadows of trees caressing the skin, a stillness that invites lazy contemplation. Right next to it, the viewer is shaken by a naked body captured in a kind of centrifuge of cold tones. This centrifugal force, aggressive and icy, breaks the peace of the adjacent work, creating a tense dialogue that perfectly summarizes the duality of the exhibition, the coexistence between serenity and chaos, between tradition and rupture. We are talking about Drawn into shadows by Andrii Kateryniuk versus Photon by Jeremy Mann.
Be that as it may, REALISM 2026 | Figura y Tiempo is an exhibition that is best perceived from a short distance, one that forces the viewer —as in the case of photographic hyperrealism present in some rooms— to look twice to distinguish the stain from reality.
Is it a perfect exhibition? Perhaps its greatest virtue is precisely its imperfection, that feeling of disorder and the amalgam of materials and genres that can be overwhelming. However, in that lack of cohesion lies its greatest truth. Current figuration is not a solid block, but an archipelago of sensibilities that try to survive immediacy.
In the end, we left the museum with the certainty that, despite the multiple influences and the saturation of styles, figurative art continues to be the place where we encounter what already belongs to us: our body and our time. A reminder that, in the era of AI, the human hand remains the most precise seismograph of our existence.