Colnaghi Madrid examines the transience, power, and desire behind beauty across centuries
Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (Fuendetodos 1746–1828 Bordeaux), The Apostle James and His Disciples Worshipping Our Lady of the Pillar, c. 1775–80, oil on canvas, 107 × 80 cm (42 ⅛ × 31 ½ in.).
MADRID.—
Colnaghi Madrid is presenting The Danger of Beauty, an exhibition curated by Luis Berenguer that brings historic paintings into conversation with contemporary works to examine how ideas of beauty have shifted across time.
On view through October 29, the exhibition pairs works by contemporary artists Hamish Pearch, Cece Philips and Liu Bin with paintings by El Greco, the Circle of Francisco de Zurbarán, Juan van der Hamen, Juan de Arellano and Francisco de Goya.
Rather than treating beauty as a fixed ideal, the exhibition considers it as something shaped by religion, social expectations and systems of power. Across European art, beauty has often been associated with divine perfection, virtue, status and material abundance. At the same time, many of these images contain an awareness that such beauty is temporary: flowers fade, food spoils, bodies age and valuable objects change hands.
That tension between attraction and impermanence runs throughout the exhibition.
Historic still lifes and devotional paintings offer examples of how beauty could serve both as a celebration of the visible world and as a reminder of its fragility. Juan van der Hamen’s Still Life with Pears, from around 1622, and Juan de Arellano’s Basket of Flowers, painted around 1670, demonstrate how carefully arranged objects and natural forms could express abundance while quietly invoking decay and transience.
A work attributed to Francisco de Goya, The Apostle James and His Disciples Worshipping Our Lady of the Pillar, dating from around 1775–80, introduces another dimension, linking beauty with religious devotion and spiritual authority.
The contemporary works extend these questions into the present.
Hamish Pearch creates sculptural assemblages that blur the distinction between organic and manufactured materials. His works often appear caught between growth, instability and deterioration, suggesting that physical beauty can be both constructed and precarious.
Cece Philips draws on portraiture, domestic interiors, archival material and personal memory. Her paintings explore the politics of looking and the relationship between intimacy and power, creating spaces in which privacy and identity remain unsettled.
Liu Bin approaches beauty through painting, using seductive imagery while resisting straightforward interpretation. Works such as Moonlit Shell, completed in 2026, present beauty as something ambiguous rather than reassuring.
By placing objects separated by centuries side by side, The Danger of Beauty highlights the persistence of questions surrounding desire, possession and display. What changes is the visual language; what remains is the complicated relationship between beauty and the impulse to own, preserve or control it.
The Danger of Beauty is on view at Colnaghi Madrid from October 1 through October 29, 2026.
