By Marc Amat
In 1966, in a Spain that was culminating in the institutionalization of the Franco regime and in the midst of a world marked by the dynamics of the cold war, the painter of Filipino origin Fernando Zóbel opened a museum in the small Castilian municipality of Cuenca. It might seem somewhat anecdotal, but this step became a beam of light for many Spanish pictorial artists. Funded outside official institutions, the Zóbel Museum of Spanish Abstract Art was born with the aim of connecting Spanish culture with the modernity that enveloped Western democracies such as the United States. He got it right away. The year of its inauguration, it had already received a visit from Alfred H. Barr, founder and first director of MoMA, who defined it as “the most beautiful little museum in the world,” and had Time magazine devote an extensive report to it.
Non-figurative works of art by Spanish artists from Zóbel’s personal collection were exhibited on its walls. In its library, you could consult art catalogs, magazines and artistic documentation of all kinds that came from all over the world. The museum became one of the few open windows that brought the breeze of American abstract expressionism to Spain. But how did artists like Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock or Willem de Kooning end up influencing Catalan artists like Modest Cuixart, Albert Ràfols-Casamada or Joan Hernández Pijuan?
We can find some answers by touring the rooms of the exhibit Els camins de l’abstracció, 1957-1978. Diàlegs amb el Museo de Arte Abstracto Español de Cuenca, was conceived and organized by the Fundació Catalunya La Pedrera and the Fundación Juan March. We are guided by Sergi Plans, who, together with Manuel Fontán del Junco and Marga Viza, is the curator of the exhibition. The exhibition can be visited in La Pedrera exhibition hall until January 15, 2023.
The Paths of Abstraction is an exhibition, but also an intense dialogue. Could we define it as such?
Yes. We have planned the exhibition trying to establish intimate and discreet conversations between the works that we exhibit. For example, Antoni Tàpies dialogues with Jean Dubuffet, Jordi Teixidor with Ad Reidhart, or Albert Ràfols-Casamada with Mark Rothko,… We have followed the philosophy that Fernando Zóbel used to organize the museum in Cuenca. He did not understand his museum as an encyclopedic and chronological installation, but as an aesthetic experience, as a space that should favor constant dialogue between the works, which also conversed with the singularity of the fifteenth-century buildings that housed them: The Hanging Houses of Cuenca. Here we have tried to do the same, but in dialogue with the fascinating Casa Milà, by Antoni Gaudí, declared by UNESCO, also a World Heritage Site.
The exhibition shows us to what extent American abstract expressionism influenced Catalan and Spanish painters. How was this connection made?
It is a long story with large doses of politics. To begin to break it down, we must place ourselves in 1945. In the artistic field, the end of the Second World War gave birth to a new generation of artists marked by pain, suffering, lack of hope, and anguish derived from the conflict. His works questioned the form, space and materials that had been used until then and newly opened the door to abstraction which established a new relationship between the painter and reality; emphasis is placed on the free projection of expressiveness, revealing the artist’s subjectivity. In the United States, abstract expressionism rose. In Europe, it was informalism.
In the midst of this panorama, what role did Spanish art play at an international level?
Political instability and the growth of totalitarianism in Europe in the 1930s caused many artists from the Old Continent to emigrate to the United States and continue to develop their artistic careers from there, such as Josef Albers or Hans Hofmann, who would continue with their pedagogical task. and they would become the teacher of many of the artists who would later make up the young generation of abstract expressionists, such as William de Kooning, Lee Krasner or Helen Frankenthaler, artists present in this exhibition. Without a doubt, it was a moment of change because the world’s artistic capital was beginning to shift from Paris to New York. After the Second World War, Spain was completely isolated from the outside world, also in terms of the artistic world.
Starting in the 1950s, Spain began a process of timid opening to the outside world. Was it noticed in the artistic field?
Yes. Specifically, 1953 marked a turning point. That year, President Dwight Eisenhower, in his first presidential year, signed the Madrid Pacts which guaranteed economic and military aid to the regime in exchange for the installation of four US military bases. From that moment, Spain began to break the period of isolation and autarchy and to expand the framework of international relations in addition to the US, with the Concordat of the Holy See and with the joining of the UN. This, without a doubt, opened the door to art from abroad, specifically, from the United States.
The United States–how did they make their art known in Europe?
American abstract art was seamlessly identified as the mark of freedom of liberal democracies and, at the same time, as the art antagonist of communist systems, of what would soon become the other side of the Iron Curtain. The United States practiced an intense policy of international promotion of its art, as a tool of cultural diplomacy.
They organized traveling exhibitions that toured the main European cities. They had always passed by Spain until 1953 when they began to stop. In this way, Catalan and Spanish artists were able to see with their own eyes the work of American abstract artists. Exhibitions such as La Virreina in 1955 or the one in 1958 in Madrid at the recently remodeled Museum of Contemporary Art, with works from MoMA, marked a turning point in Catalan and Spanish art.
In the same way that American art entered Spain, did Spanish art also reach the United States?
Effectively. The relationship was bidirectional. In 1960, two major exhibitions on Spanish art were held in New York. The first, at the Guggenheim Museum, which had just opened its doors. It was called Before Picasso. After Miró. It was not an isolated thing. In fact, the museum had already included works by Tàpies and Chillida in its permanent collection. The same year, also in New York, the New Spanish painting and sculpture was inaugurated, organized in collaboration with the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and which could be seen for four months at MoMa. Tàpies and Chillida could be seen, but also Cuixart, Tharrats, Saura or Canogar. Spanish Informalist art was valued internationally.
How does Spanish Informalism, influenced by American Abstract Expressionism, fit into Francoism?
Beginning in the mid-1950s, Spanish painters soaked up outside influences and incorporated them into their work, but they had to do it cunningly. They had to circumvent the censorship and repression of the regime. However, the Franco regime did not see the art of the Informalists as an element that could be subversive. Even at the III Hispano-American Biennial Held in Barcelona in 1955, Franco assured that, if this was the revolution, it was not a problem. These words made the ministerial apparatuses begin to export Spanish abstract art abroad and strengthen its presence in the great artistic biennials. Important international recognitions would be collected, but on the contrary, inside it did not receive any support, nor was it present in the few existing public museums.
The exhibition can be seen in La Pedrera until January 15, 2023, but it also has a program of activities that will be carried out in other facilities. What does it consist of?
We want the exhibition to expand throughout the city of Barcelona and establish dialogues about abstraction with other artistic disciplines, such as music, photography or cinema. That is why at the Fundació Catalunya La Pedrera we have co-created a series of proposals with other cultural institutions to expand content and provide other perspectives that amplify the exhibition. They can all be found on our website. We will carry out activities with the Gran Teatre del Liceu, the Filmoteca de Catalunya, the Fundació Antoni Tàpies, the Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya (ESMUC), the Biblioteca de Catalunya, the Fundació Foto Colectania, and the Fundació Suñol.
More information on the exhibition: https://www.lapedrera.com/es/agenda-actividades-barcelona/exposiciones/los-caminos-de-la-abstraccion-1957-1978
Program of the extended exhibition: https://www.lapedrera.com/es/agenda-actividades-barcelona/ciclo/exposicion-expandida
