Bert made this oil painting after a visit to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao (Spain). The painting shows the central hall of the museum. Bert was particularly attracted by the incidence of light and the interplay of lines. The building is a museum piece in itself due to its deconstructivist architecture. Open to the public since 1997, it was designed by North American architect Frank Gehry. Frank Gehry is a representative of deconstructivism. This is a modern architectural style in which the structures appear to be a confusing collection of randomly placed planes and twisted lines that together give the impression that the structure could collapse at any moment. The concept of deconstruction was developed in the 1960s by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida. Derrida laid the foundations for the postmodern philosophical movement of deconstructivism, in which nothing has a fixed meaning. His ideas from the 1960s were later applied in the 1980s in the visual arts and architecture. In architecture, the style is characterized by a deliberate shift of structural elements, resulting in buildings without a specific purpose. Visitors entering through the hall leading to the exhibition areas enter the atrium depicted in the painting, the heart of the museum and one of the building's most remarkable spaces. It has a metal-finished flower-shaped skylight that lets in light to illuminate the warm and inviting space. From the atrium, visitors can access a terrace covered by a canopy supported by a single pillar. The exhibition spaces are organized in three floors around the central atrium. They are connected by a system of undulating walkways suspended from the ceiling, by glass elevators and by several "stair turrets".
