Human groups have seen animals as mirrors in which we can recognise ourselves; they help us to understand the world, acting as witnesses to an atavistic past that still manifests itself in our behaviour. Depictions of animals can be found in the very origins of art; the representation of animals in art explores our relationship with them in depth and takes a stance halfway between closeness and distance, familiarity and otherness. Art has borne witness to the different meanings given to animality as changes have occurred throughout history. As human societies distanced themselves from nature, animals were relegated to being an economic resource; however, at the same time, their ancestral role in founding myths, understanding how the natural environment works and in the symbolic construction of reality has survived in artistic representation, mythology, fables, philosophy, popular wisdom and language. 

Animality. Animal images in the Würth Collection, It exhibits over 150 works and more than 85 artists from 1875 to 2020 that illustrate the development of the history of contemporary art in virtually every form of art: from fin de siècle Academic Costumbrismo to Modern Art, including the Classic Avant-Garde, Conceptual Art, Pop Art and Neo-expressionism. The exhibition curatorial layout does not set out to be a historical journey through the development of contemporary art, but rather a thematic consideration of representations of animality, featured by some of the most significant artists in contemporary art as Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Joan Miró, Henry Moore, Georg Baselitz, André Masson, Barry Flanagan, Günter Grass, Fernando Botero, Klaus Rinke o Dieter Roth.

The exhibition uses humour, tenderness, symbolism, dry wit, observation and imagination to invite us to reflect on the urgent need to establish conservation policies and increase the support for scientific research, on conserving ecosystems for the survival of all species (including humans), on the legal status of animals as "sentient beings" and no more as "property", on the philosophical category of non-human animals and on the concept of an animality in which we are increasingly seeing elements of humanity.