PATIO HERRERIANO MUSEUM: AN PERSPECTIVE ON CONTEMPORARY SPANISH PAINTING

     The two specific moments that the museum's curatorial team, in collaboration with curator of the exhibition Mariano Navarro, defined for the organisation of Painting: Ongoing Renovation are the period of the late 1960s and early 1970s, a time at the end of Franco's regime, and the 1990s and the beginning of the 21st century.

     In the first period covered by the exhibition, the focus is on the relationship that certain groups of painters began to establish with the conceptual perspectives of art, as well as the combination of previously separate worlds such as abstraction and figuration. This period of Spanish painting, according to the museum, was characterised by its participation in currents imported from the United States, such as abstract expressionism, minimalism and post-minimalism, on the one hand, and the influence of figurative currents coming from France, on the other.

     The second period, which runs from the 1990s to the dawn of our century, is what has been called a "new impulse in Spanish painting". Basically a recapitulation of the previous period; a generation of painters seduced by the inheritance they received from the 70s, a painting free of the influences and historical models of abstraction and figuration, added to an expanded conception of the pictorial medium.

     Painting: Permanent Renovation, in short, is conceived as a critical essay on the evolution of painting in Spain. Without pretending to establish a hierarchy, all the artists selected for the exhibition constitute a body of work in constant transformation that questions the hegemonic perspective that places the 1980s as the peak of Spanish painting.

Artists: Ignasi Aballí, Ángeles Agrela, Pep Agut, Alfonso Albacete, Irma Álvarez-Laviada, Elvira Amor, Eloy Arribas, Antonio Ballester Moreno, Juan Carlos Bracho, Victoria Civera, Nacho Criado, Luis Cruz Hernández, Ángela de la Cruz, José Díaz, Jorge Diezma, Miren Doiz, Sabine Finkenauer, Carlos Franco, Alejandra Freymann, Patricia Gadea, Sandra Gamarra, Paloma Gámez, Santiago Giralda, Luis Gordillo, Rubén Guerrero, Joan Hernández Pijuan, Secundino Hernández, Abraham Lacalle, Miki Leal, Carlos León, Pere Llobera, Carlos Maciá, José Maldonado, Miguel Marina, Nacho Martín Silva, Mitsuo Miura, Miquel Mont, Guillermo Mora, Nico Munuera, Sonia Navarro, Juan Navarro Baldeweg, Álvaro Negro, Rasmus Nilausen, José Miguel Pereñíguez, Kiko Pérez, Guillermo Pérez Villalta, Jaime Pitarch, Belén Rodríguez, Néstor Sanmiguel, Santiago Serrano, Ignacio Tovar, Juan Ugalde, Alain Urrutia, Juan Uslé, Santiago Ydáñez.