Elena Asins (1940-2015) is celebrated at MACA from today in a collaborative project that unites the center of Alicante, the Reina Sofia National Museum, and the Consorci de Museus de la Generalitat Valenciana. This initiative, developed over several years to explore the artist’s contributions, acknowledges Asins as a founder in Spain of using computers in the creation process and in advancing geometric abstraction, a distinction recognized by her Gold Medal of Merit in Fine Arts in 2006 and the National Plastic Arts Award in 2011.
The culmination of this effort is Elena Asins. The Wind’s Sound, a tireless whistle, forms part of the exhibition that travels through the career of the Alicante-born artist. The show, aligned with the Year of Sempere, presents 63 works created across decades from the mid 1960s to the early 2000s, inviting visitors to trace a long and influential arc.
The exhibition remains open until May 28 and marks a shift away from figurative painting in the early 1960s toward geometric abstraction. In 1964, at age 24, Asins abandoned expressionist form in favor of precise, abstract language that reveals a disciplined, hermetic logic and a persistently exploratory approach.
The works on display come from prominent collections and holdings including the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía; MACVAC, the Villafamés University Museum; the Mediterranean Foundation; and the Spirit-Matter Collection. Some pieces associated with Elena Asins belong to MACA’s own holdings, with others coming from collections such as Robledo-Palop in New York or Ars Citerior, demonstrating a broad network of support and influence around the artist’s work.
Dimension artist Elena Asins dies
The show highlights the continuation of Elena Asins’s influence within Spanish geometric art. The curatorial team uses her trajectory to illuminate the dialogue between artists who shaped geometric abstraction in the latter half of the 20th century. The exhibition emphasizes how Asins’s practice, rooted in computation and modular reasoning, intersects with wider movements in contemporary art and how it influenced later generations.
The display is organized to showcase a progression from the early formal experiments to more complex, algorithm-driven compositions. The curators emphasize that Asins’s methodical approach and willingness to incorporate computational techniques helped redefine the field of geometric art during a pivotal era in Spanish art history.
One of the works shown illustrates the contemporary relevance of Asins’s practice, inviting visitors to consider the negotiations between math, computation, and visual language. The exhibition celebrates the collaborative effort behind the project and recognizes the roles of the participating institutions in presenting a comprehensive view of the artist’s legacy.
The exhibition is supported by a network of collaborators and patrons who share a commitment to presenting innovative European art in national and regional collections. The collaboration highlights the strong ties between the Alicante cultural scene and national institutions in Madrid, as well as regional governance that supports cultural development across communities.
Visibility of your business
The show Making Visible the Importance of Elena Asins’s Work underscores the sustained and essential presence of Eusebio Sempere, a central figure in Spanish art history whose influence on the second generation of geometric artists is well documented. The exhibition demonstrates how Sempere’s impact intersects with Asins’s practice in a dialogue that spans decades and institutions, reinforcing the MACA collection as a hub for geometric inquiry.
Rosa Castells, curator of the MACA collections, explains how the exhibition foregrounds this intergenerational dialogue and how the yearlong program aligns with regional cultural strategies. Ximo López Camps, regional secretary for Generalitat Culture, José Luis Pérez Pont, director of the Consorci de Museus, and Antonio Manresa, Cultural Advisor to the Alicante City Council, participated in the opening discussions and the formal presentation of the project.
Sempere of a century ago
The exhibition features contextual material about Elena Asins’s links to Eusebio Sempere, highlighting a shared interest in computation as a driver of artistic exploration. It presents Sempere’s early experiments at the Madrid Computing Center, where he and Asins met, signaling a pivotal moment in the collaboration between artists who helped redefine geometric practice in Spain.
Link with Sempere
Ximo López Camps notes that Elena Asins represents a strong example of early computer-assisted creation and the development of geometric form. The exhibition also records the communication channels that Asins established with Sempere, underscoring a meaningful collaboration that anchors the Year of Sempere in Alicante.
The event is framed as a strategic cultural initiative to begin the Year of Sempere with a strong, revealing interpretation of Asins’s work and its connection to a renowned geometry-focused creator. López Camps emphasizes that the Alicante presentation holds particular significance for Generalitat Culture, reflecting an enduring partnership among museums and regional authorities that delivers high-quality cultural content to the city through inter-institutional cooperation.
José Luis Pérez Pont notes that this is the first Consorci de Museus exhibition in Alicante in 2023. Elena Asins is described as a conceptual artist, writer, and art critic who contributed to the renewal of Spanish art in the 1960s and 1970s. Recognizing Asins is crucial to understanding the evolution of artistic creativity in Spain, where she helped fuse art and technology, mathematics, and abstraction into a compelling new language. The project thus gains special resonance in the MACA setting as part of the Year of Sempere’s commemoration.
Antonio Manresa points out that the exhibition was made possible through inter-institutional cooperation, reinforcing the value of collective effort. The city’s cultural landscape benefits from this collaboration as it continues to offer audiences challenging and meaningful programming while maintaining MACA’s high standards and its commitment to artists who expand the boundaries of geometric art.