BBVA Collection

Travelling is one of the greatest pleasures in life. Visiting new cities, learning about new cultures and other languages is a dream for many. But travelling across the globe is not as easy as it seems. Fortunately, paintings have the power of taking us to other places and eras. BBVA Collection has set out to bring all corners of the world together, so that we can have them at hand’s reach.

There is no greater witness to history than art. Present in all eras and cultures, artisticcreations have come down to our day filled with esthetic and documentary value. For that reason, the work at the BBVA Collection has very little to do with finance. It consists of caring for art, in order to preserve our history.

It’s always new times for innovation. It has always been and it will always be. It’s in our nature to challenge the model to stress the rules. Even our own model.

Just as they do every summer, the streets of Paris, New York and Madrid prepare to be discovered by visitors and to enliven their imagination. Who hasn´t dreamed at one time or another of strolling through their favorite city two hundred years ago and living its history in first person? There´s no need to go on dreaming. Thanks to the BBVA Collection, we can go around the world and revisit the past.

Every summer, in early July, the Grand-Place in Brussels returns to the 16th century and receives the Court of Charles V. For three days, the centre of Brussels becomes the home of period costumes, jousting on horseback, and crossbow tournaments in celebration of the Ommegang Festivities.

He travels incognito in a big wooden box that reveals neither the contents nor the destination. Completely immobilized and protected from any impact, Charles II arrives in Puebla by land and by air. The International Museum of the Baroque in Puebla anxiously awaits the arrival of this King’s portrait - part of the BBVA Collection. It hangs in one of the rooms of the exhibition “The Art of Nations: The Baroque as Global Art”. There nothing disturbs the monarch who probably never dreamt he would one day visit Mexico.

There was a time when fashion was not decided in Paris, Milan or New York. At one point, it was Philip II’s Spain, an empire where the sun never set, who told the world how to dress. As a reflection of the time, art is the perfect guide to learn about fashion in the 16th and 17th Centuries through the BBVA Collection.

BBVA Chairman Francisco González today presented a new book called Reinventing the company in the digital era. It contains the thoughts of specialists from different fields of knowledge on how the revolution driven by information technology is transforming the principles we use in our work and business activities. Apart from Francisco González, the participants at the presentation included other co-authors: Philip Evans (Boston Consulting Group), Alison Maitland (London Cass Business School), and Celia de Anca and Salvador Aragón, both from IE Business School.