“Spanish Painting From El Greco to Picasso: Time, Truth, and History,” which opens tomorrow as the main attraction at the Guggenheim, is one of those rare, exhilarating shows that lets painting speak of and for itself. Curated by Carmen Giménez and Francisco Calvo Serraller, the show is about Spanish painting between the 16th and the 20th centuries. Transcending geography, the exhibit gives us something much deeper and more profound than the “Spanish School.”

The show, which allows us to see El Greco next to Velázquez next to Picasso next to Goya, gets at the heart of why painters paint. It reminds us that the roots of Surrealism and Cubism are in the fractured, compartmentalized spaces of El Greco’s fervent mysticism; that Goya’s and Picasso’s shared love of the bullfight — of the blood in the sand — speaks as much to the devout Catholicism of the Counter Reformation as it does to their love of ancient, sacrificial rites and myths; that early Cubism’s monochrome tonalities, though inspired by gray, Parisian light, have their spiritual grounding in the browns and grays of Zurbarán, and that Velázquez’s profound naturalism is steeped within a culture in which religious belief and hard fact came head to head.

Despite its overarching subtitle (taken from a painting in the show by Goya), the exhibit’s thesis is quite simple: Bring together approximately 140 paintings by Spanish masters such as El Greco, Diego Velázquez, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Francisco de Zurbarán, Francisco de Goya, Juan Gris, Joan Miró,and Pablo Picasso; ignore period and chronology and, instead, place still lifes next to still lifes, monks next to monks, female portraits next to female portraits, nudes next to nudes, landscapes next to landscapes, and so on — then let the dialogues unfold. The astounding, exponential results tell us as much about particular genres of painting and about the rich spirit of Spanish art — simultaneously visionary, fiery, ecstatic, and dark; naturalistic, humble, and reverent — as they do about the larger tradition of painting.

Certainly every country’s art has its peculiar traits. “Spanish Painting” conveys what is essential to Spanish art: the isolationist, Counter-Reformation culture that inspired an innovative art born of profound religious beliefs, self-reliance, and self-critique. What the show fails to do on its surface is to remind viewers that Spanish art, though it remains “Spanish,” did not develop in a vacuum. Velázquez, El Greco, and Goya all worked in Italy. Gris, Miró, and Picasso spent years in France. It may be true that you can take the artist out of Spain but that you cannot take Spain out of the artist. But it is also true that El Greco’s art (inspired by Titian, Michelangelo, Parmigianino, and Tintoretto) and that of Velázquez (inspired by the naturalism of Caravaggio) are also Italian in temperament. And Picasso’s omnivorous art — which devoured and then resurrected everything in its path — owes as much to the Italian, French, and Northern traditions as to those born in Spain.

This gets me back to what is so great about this show: It is not about Spain, per se; it is about painting. Artists become painters because they love painting; and painting, its own language, transcends nationality. To be able to see Picasso’s “Portrait of Marie-Thérèse Walter With a Garland”(February 6,1937),with her head in profile and her Cubist eyes and chest in frontal view, next to Velázquez’s “Portrait of Queen Mariana” (c. 1656), in which the sitter’s eyes are starkly frontal within a head that keeps shifting from side to side and pushing toward a three-quarter view, is to be aware of the fact that all artists since Giotto have been Modern.

Velázquez’s portrait is as weird, if not weirder, than Picasso’s. The queen’s hair rushes like a torrent simultaneously across the plane and back into space, spinning her head. Velázquez’s portrait makes Marie-Thérèse’s Cubist eyes seem rather tame by comparison. Both artists, doing whatever it takes to give us the presence of a living being — an individual with active and conflicting desires — distort and invent and interpret freely on the canvas. They may end up with a likeness, but conveying a resemblance of life is secondary to that of conveying life itself.

Other paintings on view make clear that Modernist distortion is nothing new. In Juan Carreño de Miranda’s “Inés de Zúñiga, Countess of Monterrey”(c.1660–70),the figure’s broad hoopskirts and corseted, funneled waist suggest not a human form but, rather, a tiered wedding cake or a passing ocean liner. Zurbarán’s “Saint Isabel of Portugal” (1640) stands, with extremely long legs, draped in layers of fabric. Yet, seemingly elevated, she glides across the canvas as if she were riding a horse, or, more strangely still, as if she were actually part horse herself. Goya’s “Still Life With Dead Hares” (c. 1808–12) can be seen near Miró’s “The Table (Still Life With Rabbit)” (August, 1920–January, 1921). In both works, the animals, though clearly dead, leap through the space, reminding us of their life, hunt, and capture, as well as of nourishment through sacrifice. Goya’s depictions of dead fowl and butchered sheep can also be seen next to paintings of the same themes by Picasso. Both artists give flight to the birds, and their severed sheep heads have human, almost demonic, qualities.

Goya’s “Duchess of Abrantes”(1816),Picasso’s “Olga in an Armchair” (1917), and Gris’s “Seated Woman” (May, 1917) are also hung near one another. Picasso’s portrait is a neoclassical work in which flower-printed decoration and portrait merge in a space somewhere between armchair and wallpaper. Gris’s Cubist portrait relates to Picasso’s neoclassicism and Goya’s decoration. And Goya’s portrait — in which a fluttering, golden sash and crown of flowers give decorative qualities, as well an allegorical sense of nature and of angelic flight — is in dialogue with both paintings. And throughout the show, with every work bouncing off of El Greco’s extroverted, exulted elongations and Zurbarán’s introverted, deeply devout monks, a spiritual sense of urgency is felt as the basis for almost all of the works on view.

True, not every moment in the show is revelatory. “Spanish Painting From El Greco to Picasso” is uneven. It has delirious highs and humdrum lows. Ending with sections devoted to “The Fallen,” “Flyers,” and “Crucifixions,” the show surprisingly peters out. Also, the obligatory works by Salvador Dalí are tedious, but their inclusion makes clear that El Greco gives us more Surrealism in a single, corkscrewing angel than Dalí does in a dozen canvases. And some of the greatest hits are absent. Picasso’s “Guernica”did not make it to Wright’s rotunda; and you will have to go to the Met to see El Greco’s “View of Toledo” and Goya’s portrait of Don Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zuiga. You will also not find Goya’s “Children With a Cart” (1778), which was stolen last week in Scranton, Pa., en route to the Guggenheim from Toledo, Ohio.

But there are many masterpieces here. And the additional worth of the exhibition is that it goes beyond that of its individual works. The show has the power to get us closer not only to Spanish art but to how those artists think, what inspires them, and how the tradition of painting is furthered through that love and inspiration. And when viewers can make that essential leap, the art of the whole world is open to them.

Tomorrow until March 28 (1071 Fifth Ave. at 89th Street, 212-423-3500).