The echo of the Royal Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial makes choral songs resonate. In the subway, a group of women dance by the light of a couple of candles while a camera records them. In the library, a camera photographs old books. The art-spirituality binomial goes back to historical representations such as cave paintings and their shamanic function, to Egyptian sarcophagi designed for life after death or to Buddhist traditions that understood art as a vehicle for meditation. For centuries, the Catholic Church was the great artistic sponsor in Europe, with its Gothic cathedrals or Byzantine iconography, but the progressive secularization of society also led to a secularization of culture. However, in recent years spirituality has once again become a muse in artistic creation. “It has exploded in everything mainstream and it is a popular thing with phenomena like Rosalía, which suddenly becomes something very attractive,” reflects the sculptor Javier Viver.
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