An exhibition that opened at Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid last November is heading into its final days, closing February 7.

In this video (Spanish with English subtitles), Miguel Angel Blanco, curator of the exhibition, explains how “The Illusion of the American Frontier” offers, for the first time in Spain, a chance to follow in the footsteps of the artists in the Nineteenth Century as they opened the way to the American West in representative landscapes and depictions of its people, the Indian tribes. These artists made visible the myth of a wild paradise and dangerous territory, an amazing natural grandeur.

With a prologue dedicated to the Spanish explorers who established the first contacts with the land and the tribes west of the Mississippi, the exhibition illustrates the exciting artistic adventures of Karl Bodmer, George Catlin and Edward Curtis, who documented, between accuracy and license ethnographic, customs, rituals and physiognomy; or landscapers, as Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Hill, painted with scenic ambition the promised land.

Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum is at Paseo del Prado, 8. For information, http://www.museothyssen.org.