Teresa Lanceta’s first solo exhibition in the U.S. is presented by The Meadows Museum, SMU, in collaboration with Fundación ARCO, Feb. 18-June 16. Lanceta is the second artist to participate in the MAS: Meadows/ARCO Artist Spotlight program. The program launched in 2021 to highlight contemporary Spanish artists and raise awareness of these artists in the U.S.
Known for her intricate and often colorful textile works, Lanceta was awarded a Premio Nacional de Artes Plásticas (National Award for Fine Arts) in 2023, in recognition of her creative impact in Spain. Lanceta will travel to Dallas to participate in educational programming about her work that will involve the Southern Methodist University (SMU) campus, its students and museum patrons.
Teresa Lanceta Exhibition
The exhibition of Lanceta’s work brings together nine works, some of them large format, covering the period from 1992 to 2020. Conceived especially for the Meadows, the collection demonstrates the diverse influences on her work and the way in which those influences and themes can manifest.
“There is no common element because I wanted it to be disruptive and to be able to exhibit both tapestries that pay homage to 15th-century Spanish carpets, such as The Order of the Band III (2004) and The Order of the Band (Multiplied), which I finished in 2018, while not leaving out three more recent pieces dedicated to the Raval neighborhood of Barcelona. A very afflicted neighborhood, which in turn is also part of the heart of the city, it plays a similarly important role in some of my works, such as Red and Black Diagonal, Arc del Teatre, and Gardunya,” Lanceta says.
Meadows/ARCO Artist Spotlight
The MAS: Meadows/ARCO Artist Spotlight program is a six-year initiative, announced in 2019. It focuses on highlighting exceptional contemporary Spanish artists who have limited recognition in the United States. Once chosen, they are offered a platform to present their work through an exhibition at the Meadows Museum. The MAS program formally launched in 2021 with an exhibition of works by conceptual artist Ignasi Aballí.
“This type of program is a key formula through which the Meadows Museum encourages dialogue and connections between Spain and America using the arts. I am delighted to be able to present Teresa Lanceta at SMU and in North Texas,” said Amanda W. Dotseth, director Linda P. and William A. Custard of the Meadows Museum. “Her commitment to the art of weaving, and to exploring its universality and impact on world culture, is an enlightening visual experience. We thank Fundación ARCO for its continued collaboration with us in making these international exchanges possible.”
“I would also like to thank the members of our selection committee, which includes Meadows Museum Advisory Board members Stacey McCord, Jenny Mullen, and Susan Albritton, and 2022-2023 Center for Spain in America Curatorial Fellow Miranda Saylor and Nasher Sculpture Center Chief Curator Jed Morse, for sharing their time and expertise,” she added.
Teresa Lanceta
Teresa Lanceta (Barcelona, 1951) is known for her imaginative tapestry-based artworks that seek to transcend assumptions about the materials themselves by inspiring the viewer’s imagination. Her work brings together a range of formal approaches: sometimes figurative and sometimes abstract; sometimes a piece combines weavings, while another features individual fabrics that have been drawn, painted, or otherwise embellished.
After receiving a doctorate in Art History from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Lanceta taught at the Massana School in Barcelona. In the early 1970s, she adopted weaving as her preferred form of artistic expression, considering it an ideal medium for building bridges between art and craft. Through her travels, she has met and been inspired by many different people and cultures and has been especially influenced by Romani and Moroccan nomadic weavers. She currently lives and works in Mutxamel (Alicante).
Other Lanceta Exhibitions
Lanceta has exhibited at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía and more recently at Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) and Institut Valencià d’Art Modern (IVAM). Her work is part of the collections of institutions such as the Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Caja de Ahorros del Mediterráneo, and the Pérez Art Museum in Miami. She participated in the 31st Sao Paulo Biennial (2004), the 57th Venice Biennial (2017), and the Bergen Assembly (2019).
She currently participates in a traveling group show entitled Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction, which has already been presented at LACMA in Los Angeles and will travel to the National Gallery in Washington, DC; the National Gallery in Ottawa; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Fundacion ARCO
Maribel López, director of Fundación ARCO, emphasizes that “the Foundation is very proud to be able to contribute to the international visibility of Spanish artists and hopes to develop this project for a long time and with a growing number of creators.”
Lanceta was chosen for MAS after an extensive, double-juried selection process involving representatives from Spain and the US. Fundación ARCO assembled a Nominating Committee composed of two collectors and two directors of institutions dedicated to contemporary art in Spain who together proposed four contemporary Spanish artists as possible participants in the program and submitted portfolios of the artists’ works to the Meadows Museum.
The Art of Weaving
“Weaving is a (hypnotic) technique based on the repetition of the same movement, the results of which are not immediately perceived. Weaving caught me and did it in a radical, absolute way, beyond the results and the consequences. In return, it has helped me to enter into the unitary time, in the time that survives in the measured time,” says Teresa Lanceta,” (and she) “thanks the Meadows Museum and Fundación ARCO for this opportunity to exhibit in Dallas and hopes that what happens during this experience will be positive and may surprise her.”
The Meadows Museum
The leading U.S. institution focused on the study and presentation of the art of Spain. In 1962, Dallas businessman and philanthropist Algur H. Meadows donated his private collection of Spanish paintings, as well as funds to start a museum, to Southern Methodist University. The museum opened to the public in 1965, marking the first step in fulfilling Meadows’s vision to create “a small Prado for Texas.” Today, the Meadows is home to one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of Spanish art outside of Spain. The collection spans from the 10th to the 21st centuries and includes medieval objects, Renaissance and Baroque sculptures, and major paintings by Golden Age and modern masters. Visit meadowsmuseumdallas.org.
