Gustav Mahler is, without a doubt, one of the most influential artists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Along with painters such as Gustav Klimt and Edvard Munch, he is part of a generation of artists that leads us from the end of Romanticism to the gates of artistic modernity, from figurative art to abstraction. This step, however, does not imply a revolutionary rupture with the past, but is the result of the evolution of tradition towards a world where the expressive freedom of the artist unfolds without limits or rules.

Mahler represents the nexus between tonality and atonality, between Romanticism and Expressionism. He is a transitional figure who creates with absolute freedom. A freedom that allows him to turn the symphony, his favorite genre, into an immense field of expressive exploration, where he recounts his life, his feelings, his fears and his joys. In the words of Mahler himself, during a conversation with Jean Sibelius, the other great symphonist of the early 20th century: "The symphony must be like the world; it must encompass everything."