The Spirit of Painting: Cai Guo-Qiang at the Prado

This book accompanies Cai Guo-Qiang's recent exhibition at the Prado, the first in over thirty years to focus solely on his painting. It explores Cai Guo-Qiang's ongoing dialogue with El Greco and the way he established a relationship with the great masters represented in the Prado.

Widely illustrated with works from all periods of the artist's career, the book features some thirty of Cai Guo-Qiang's gunpowder paintings made with gunpowder, an oil and an acrylic created at the start of his career as a painter; and various sketches and drawings on matchboxes by his father, Cai Ruiqin, who steered him towards painting.

The catalogue includes texts and essays by Miguel Zugaza, Alejandro Vergara, Kosme Barañano and Cai Guo-Qiang himself, in which he reflects on his life and artistic career and on the principles and concerns that have governed the evolution of his work.