The Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB) will present ‘The Atomic Age’ from 26 November 2026 to 17 May 2027, bringing together close to 250 works and previously unpublished documents on the impact of atomic energy and nuclear history. The exhibition will examine how artists have responded to the scientific, political and cultural consequences of the atomic era across the 20th and 21st centuries.
The exhibition takes the detonation of the first atomic test in New Mexico in July 1945 as a decisive historical rupture. According to the CCCB, the event introduced a new experience of time whose effects extend across a scale that remains difficult to establish. ‘The Atomic Age’ connects that experience to science, politics and culture, while also considering how the discovery of atomic structures altered ideas about matter and reality.
Its historical scope begins in the late 19th century, when developments in physics demonstrated that the atom was not the ultimate element of matter. The exhibition follows artists who responded by combining science with mysticism and occultism, as well as those who abandoned conventional representation in favour of conceptual approaches aimed at making the imperceptible perceptible.
The use of the atomic bomb against Japan by the United States in 1945 generated further artistic responses, ranging from a fascination with the aesthetics of physics to representations of the tragic and sublime and the spectacularisation of nuclear explosions. From the 1970s onwards, protest movements opposing civil and military nuclear development helped shape practices informed by ecology, feminism, anticolonialism and counterculture.
The presentation will also address the nuclear accidents at Chernobyl in 1986 and Fukushima in 2011, alongside contemporary questions about rearmament, the energy crisis and the management of radioactive waste. A section devoted to Spanish nuclear history will examine the construction of the country’s first nuclear power stations during the Franco era and current debates over the phase-out of nuclear power.
The works on view will include paintings, drawings, photographs, videos and installations by artists including Hélène de Beauvoir, Henri Becquerel, Bruce Conner, Eduardo Chillida, Salvador Dalí, Marcel Duchamp, Hilma af Klint, Jürgen Nefzger, Yoko Ono, Raymond Pettibon, Joan Rabascall and Nancy Spero. The exhibition is curated by Julia Garimorth, Maria Ptqk and Maria Stavrinaki, and is described by the CCCB as a new adaptation of an exhibition curated by Garimorth and Stavrinaki that was presented at the Musée d’Art Moderne of Paris / Paris Musées between October 2024 and February 2025. The opening is scheduled for 25 November, with the public exhibition dates running from 26 November 2026 through 17 May 2027.
