In 2000 a book by Victor I. Published by Siruela Stoichita was awarded the Best Book in 1999. In it, Brief history of the shadow , Stoichita, professor of art at the University of Freiburg, analyzes the representation of the shadow in the Western visual arts, from painting and drawing, photography and film. A few years later, in an exhibition can be seen until May 17 and has Stoichita himself as a curator, you can keep track of the presence of shadow in the history of the arts.
The first part of the exhibition is located in the temporary exhibition rooms of the Thyssen-Bornemisza. It starts really well with the first gallery devoted to several paintings with an identical reason: a character (usually a woman) on the wall stretches follow the contour of the shadow of another character (almost always his mistress), a scene that includes a former legend about the invention of the drawing. The note offers a picturesque the twentieth century painting that speaks of the birth of socialist realism in which a muse stretches follow the contour of Stalin.
The following rooms (where exposure is diluted a bit in his speech and is more irregular) are Dedicated to the presence of shadow in the Renaissance (especially the divine shadow, and the reason of the Annunciation) and Baroque (the dark, the wonderful use of light of Georges La Tour or the nuances of Rembrandt). The shadow in the eighteenth century used to show the contradictions of a century so-called "Enlightenment", where the shadow plays an important role in the sinister and romantic spirit, especially troubling is a picture of William Holman Hunt, entitled The shadow of death (1870-1873), in which Christ's shadow projected on a board with carpentry tools becomes a premonition of his crucifixion. The last rooms of this exhibition reach nineteenth century, impressionism and modernism straddling two centuries. Although best-known authors in the room devoted to "Symbolism and the end of the century" are Édouard Vuillard and Félix Vallotton, and the interior light of a lamp, the more interesting seem small works of Léon Spilliaert and homage to the city night (see picture after this). In the room on the "Impressionism" shadow appears luminous landscapes by Sisley, Rusiñol Sorolla, away from the darkness of the past. 
To continue with the chronology, after this part of the exhibition, the payment in the Thyssen, you have to go to the Fundación Caja Madrid, opposite the convent of the Barefoot Royals, where free will ends the tour of the shadow in five rooms. The first two are devoted to "modern realism" and surrealism. The best of the first is located in De Chirico, in Carel Willink (especially his painting preacher) and the known paintings Portrait dr. Haustein, Christian Schad (illustrating the entire exhibition and this paragraph), where an eerie shadow is cast behind a doctor apparently calm, and Hotel Room , Hopper, one of the best known representations of loneliness, that title would (Not coincidentally) one of the works of David Lynch. Surrealism room offers more or less known works by Dali, Delvaux and Magritte, but much less interesting than the last. Behind the wall where it has placed a painting by Picasso, half hidden, displayed the last three rooms. If we miss a little of pop art, which only features a self-portrait of Andy Warhol, will access to the rooms that most interest us on this blog, devoted to photography and film. In the photo, along with the work of Ramón Masats, Francesc Català-Roca or Dorothea Lange, or the splendid series on an acrobat doing exercises in a chair without a shadow of Sam Taylor-Wood (chair Bram Stoker, 2005), there are the experiments of Man Ray, some of which, like the shadows that are projected through a window in a woman's torso, are frames of some of his work film within the first avant-garde, in particular, in the example above, as part of Le retour à la raison (1923).
If this fact is pointed out especially because this is one of the many loopholes in the section devoted to film. In the 65-minute assembly is offered in that room get footage of the first The Student of Prague, the Caligari, Nosferatu of of Robison Shadows or silhouettes of Lotte Reiniger, reaching Greenaway and Tarantino, through something of Hitchcock, Hawks Scarface, The Third Man Carol Reed and Ivan the Terrible of Eisenstein, or some quaint customs of the shadow on the film by Woody Allen. The head of the mount is too entranced by expressionism and forget other obvious references such as the Danish film (loosely represented by Dreyer's Vampyr, pictured below, which is not even a Danish production), or French cinema years 20 (where are L'Herbier and Epstein, for example?). It is clear that that would have lengthened the projection, but also could have been solved with the exposure of frames in that or any other room (the top floor of the Foundation was empty). 
What I say is true not only silent movies. If a movie poorly represented in this assembly, and that is the most obvious of all in the use of shadows, the film is black. Where, for example, Detour? Neither seem to be very fond of horror movies sound (although the sample of Cat People is certainly fine), or has been concerned with looking for signs of the 50 and 60 absent. Seems excessive presence of Greenaway and more than anecdotal sample of contemporary cinema beyond him, a Kill Bill fight . Surely in the current authors with samples of black and white film, as Béla Tarr, would have more of an example. Beyond these gaps in the theater and irregularities of speech that presents the paintings, there is no doubt that this is an interesting and well thought out exhibition, where more than display famous works, that there is gives an invitation to reflect on the repetition and reinterpretation of that ground in the arts and, of course, to devour the book from which some of this exposure. 
