They were on different sides, in different countries and in different contexts. They were united by the desire to create, but also by the desolation the wars left behind. some later Spanish civil warlater and others World War II The first led to dictatorship, the second put an end to fascism. Many stayed and others had to leave.
But art progressed and showed the world that In the worst conditions, creation continues, a road with more or less curves, with no breaks or jumps into the void, but a road after all. This route is the route you want to show Art in a wasteland, 1939-1959, Exhibition organized by IVAM, which can be viewed at the Alicante Museum of Contemporary Art (MACA) until January 29.
“Until my generation, art history was told to us as a linear history, a history of movements, but we know that this is not the case,” said the director of the Valencia Institute of Modern Art. Nuria Enguita, during the presentation with the curator, nacho paris; curator of municipal collections, Rosa Castellsand Cultural Council Member, Anthony Manresa.
with the exhibition more than 80 tracks“We put an extremely challenging period on the table and how the connections are produced, the synchronicities between the artists on one side, because they were all created in a wasteland”.
IVAM, courtyard Herrerian Museum, Esmeraldina Gumbau Collection, Lafuente Archive and World War I.Valencian Cultural Institute handed over jobs Brossa, Chillida, Duchamp, Brossa, Dubuffet, Julio González, Newman, Palazuelo, Saura, Tàpies, Gorky, Reinhart, Buñuel or Val del Omar, sharing space with five works from the MACA collections to complete the meaning of the exhibition, among others: two by Juana Frances, one never exhibited in the museum before; two by Eusebio Sempere and one by NavarroRamon, plus three Arcadi Blascos, Alicante University Museum.
“The exhibition aims to show different ways of making art, styles that coexist out of synchronicity, not evolution from one style to another,” he says. nacho paris. “I dare say that art is always the same and there are formal solutions that can fall one way or the other.”
as “an excellent opportunity to explore created art” a troubled time The sociopolitical, economic and cultural situation has some worrying repercussions even today” defines this example. Rosa Castells. It “contextualizes the work of artists” and is “a representation of what has happened in these two decades that will forever mark the art of the 20th century”.
According to Antonio Manresa, “this shows us the break with the avant-garde artistic movements that emerged as a result of the two wars, a time when culture was used to impose its own doctrine and its own worldview.”
Joint actions between IVAM and MACA
IVAM and MACA signed an agreement late last year that makes a decades-long collaboration black-on-white.
“We have a desire to be a museum beyond a museum, a traveling collection,” said Enguita. “ IVAM is a museum of the Valencian Community. and it seemed important to us that he could have a dialogue with another museum”.
Also, it goes both ways, as the Alicante museum “has jobs we don’t have” and “we must promote the sharing of resources”.
In fact, both centers are working on how to put together a “long-term project” from the Jenkins-Romero collection.
“We are committed to developing and institutionalizing collaboration on a variety of projects related to collections, restoration, temporary exhibitions, education, research and publications,” said Castells.
EXHIBITION SECTIONS
- Green in our arid lands
Art and culture were important to the first Franco regime (1939-1959). propaganda tool. Falangist culture and National Catholicism in the forties, forgetting avant-garde experiences and a return to academic forms linked to the formation of the ‘national spirit’ rather than free individual expression. However, despite censorship and the desire for absolute control of cultural production, there were still artists who tried to perpetuate or reinvent this innovative spirit, individually or in groups. The decade of the fifties would assume progressive tolerance of the State with more experimental artistic forms and practices. Abstraction will emerge victorious in the artistic field from an intense debate about its meaning and possibilities. Paradoxically, sacred art would be one of the gateways to more contemporary forms. Avant-garde art, in parallel with the intensification of diplomatic relations with the United States the Cold Wara came to be used to promote an image of openness and freedom, as was done there.
- shoots
The victory of Nazism in Germany serious suspension of freedomsThe persecution of all cultural and artistic forms not related to the Third Reich, and the forced exile of a large number of creatives and intellectuals. In 1939, German troops invaded Poland, by 1941 Germany had already occupied almost all of Europe. As the Nazi occupation progressed, many artists took a long flight. The defeat of the Republicans in Spain led to a mass exodus of great artistic and cultural figures. Just as avant-garde art was nourished by the Spanish migration to Paris in the twenties and thirties, now this forced migration between nostalgia, hope and harmony will enrich many host regions. Thus, Spanish exile in Mexico or European exile in the USA would be the basis for artistic renewal.
- Like those waiting for the dawn
After World War II a new geopolitical orderEurope is no longer the economic or cultural center. On both sides of the Atlantic, the experience of war and the sense of failure of the cultural traditions—even accompanying—that have proven powerless to stop barbarism calls for a profound renewal of both sources and media. materials and artistic applications. There is a feeling that it is necessary to start over, that what happened before was a failure. Then, the spontaneous or the illogical, the exploration of the limits of reason or knowledge, the purely visual versus the narrative, individual freedom, subjectivity, trace, wound or breakage on canvas or material are resorted to. It is an effort to forget learning and start over. Art thinks more and more of itself. Art makes art its subject.