Valencian Institute for Modern Art Opens an Exhibition of Works Donated to Its Collection

VALENCIA.- The Institut Valencià d’Art Modern has received a lot of artworks over the last 25 years. Out of the 10 643 works comprising the IVAM’s collection, 61 % are donations made by collectors, artists and heirs who have considered that the IVAM is the perfect museum to preserve and disseminate their creations. Thanks to the donations, the museum has increased its artistic heritage becoming a reference museum for studying the works of some artists, for example Julio González, whose name is also the name of the IVAM headquarters. Artworks by Miquel Navarro, Gerardo Rueda, the Equipo Crónica, Jacques Lipchitz, or Gabriel Cualladó also appear in the exhibition. We should emphasized the name of other artists who, thanks to the donations made by them or their heirs, have contributed to turn the museum into an essential place for the study and knowledge of their works. Some of these artists are: Ignacio Pinazo, Bernard Plossu, Eduardo Arroyo, Díaz Caneja, Horacio Coppola, Gabriele Basilico, Juana Francés, José Sanleón, Manolo Gil, Rafael Pérez Contel, Salvador Victoria, Paco Caparrós, Georges Zimbel, Carlos Canovas, Grete Stern, Joan Antoni Vicent, Roberto Otero, John Davies and Carlos Pascual de Lara.

The IVAM wants to make public some of the pieces that have been donated and for with this intention we have organized a large exhibition that covers five rooms in the museum: galleries number 2,3,4,7 and the hall in the second floor. Some of the exhibited artworks are shown for the first time, and they follow the layout of the core that defines the museum’s collection. The IVAM has received donated works from more than 500 artists from the late 19th century up to now.

Julio González Gallery
Julio González and the tradition of iron sculpture
Julio González gallery includes painting, drawing, sculpture and craftsmanship in precious metals of the important legacy of this artist, whose name is also the name of the IVAM headquarters and whose contributions have turn the IVAM into a museum of reference for studying his work. It also includes paintings and drawings made by his brother Joan González and his daughter Roberta. The presence of Julio González collection has encouraged other sculptors of the 20th century to donate their works. We can emphasize the donation of masks made by André Derain and donated by Peter Coray and the important collection of plaster by Jacques Lipchitz that was donated by his heirs. Other artists that continue the tradition of abstract sculpture in iron paying tribute to Julio González are Anthony Caro, Martín Chirino, Joan Cardells and Miquel Navarro.

Gallery number 3
Preliminaries of modernity in Valencian art
IVAM’s collection pays a great deal of attention to some artists that have rethought the modernity from a different perspective, that is, considering its isolation regarding the international artistic centres. In this sense, it is essential to set the modernity’s origin in the work by Ignacio Pinazo together with other artists’ donations as for example works by Timoteo Pérez Rubio (Juan Gil Albert’s portrait), Rafael Pérez Contel and Manolo Gil.

Experimental abstraction and graphic design
In the second room, there are shown some similar avant-garde works that create traditions which have survived in the post-war period and that have reappeared with the neo avant-garde movement in the seventies and eighties. When selecting the graphic and work design on paper we find works by Gustav Klucis, Lazslo Moholy-Nagy, Karel Teige, John Heartfield, Van Doesburg, Crous-Vidal, Giralt-Miracle, Joan Brossa, Javier Mariscal, Alberto Corazón or Paco Bascuñan. In the section dedicated to the experimental abstraction we can find the most representatives of the historic avant-garde movement, with artists like Robert Delaunay, Herbert Bayer, Max Bill, Jean Helion, Josef and Anni Albers and artists of later periods that maintain the abstraction in their works as for example José Mª Iglesias, Joaquim Llucià, Pic Adrián and Elena Asins.

The figuration’s survival
In the third room we can see some of the works characterized by the loyalty to figuration, understanding it as the disciplined practice of painting with a deliberated and resistant position to the equalization of the artistic style in the last third of the 20th century. Some representative artists are Pascual de Lara, Díaz Caneja, Fausto Mellotti, Zoran Music, Ida Barbarigo, María Girona, Gerardo Rueda and Cristino de Vera.

The photography in the middle decades of the 20th century
The fourth room is based on photography. It shows, on the one hand, the dramatic scenes of the Spanish Civil War taken by anonymous photographers and some others taken by important ones like Robert Capa or David Seymour “Chim”; on the other hand, it shows the most experimental work made by authors like Catalá Pic, Alexander Rodchenko y Barbara Stepanova and the documentary facet of Walker Evans, Hermanos Mayo, and Horacio Coppola. It can be seen as well works taken by great photographers as Friedlander, Herbert List and Gabriel Cualladó together with almost unknown photographs by Julio González.

Colour, material y gesture
The fifth room comprises a selection of sculptures with works by Esteban Vicente, Martín Chirino, Manolo Gil, Alain Kirili, Lucebert, Markus Lupertz, Gerardo Rueda, Salvador Soria, Navarro Baldeweg. There are also some paintings typical of the Spanish Informalism represented by Antonio Saura, Manolo Millares, Salvador Victoria, Antoni Tàpies, Jacinta Gil, Salvador Soria, Juana Francés, Cristóbal Gabarrón y, junto a ellos, las composiciones pictóricas de Alberto Corazón, Caio Fonseca, Miguel A. Campano, Luis Gordillo, and Jorge Teixidor.

Gallery number 4
Deviant images: Pop and its environment
The sixth and seventh rooms gather typical works of some artistic trends as the Pop Art together with the narrative figuration which has a wide representation in the IVAM’s collection with some authors as Equipo Realidad, Erro, Fischli & Weiss, Katharina Fritsch, Claes Oldenburg, Ran Oron, Ana Peters, Darryl Pottorf, Richard Prince, Christopher Makos, Robert Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist, Joan Verdú, Richard Bosman, Juan Antonio Toledo, Rafael Solbes, Manuel Boix, Andrés Cillero, Luis Gordillo, Antonio de Felipe, deMo (Eladio de Mora), Equipo Crónica, Eduardo Arroyo, Herminio Molero and Guillermo Pérez-Villalta. In the seventh room we can find a selection of photographs related to this trends with works by Grete Stern, Roberto Otero, John Baldessari, Gerhard Richter, Antoni Miró, P. Pomet, Darío Villalba, Alberto Schommer, Dis Berlin, América Sánchez, Ciuco Gutierrez, Ariane Lopez-Huici and Chema Madoz.

Distancing from the modern tradition: art as biography and search for new languages
The eighth room is dedicated to photography. It includes works by Sergio Larraín, Georg S. Zimbel, Gabriele Basilico, Alex Harris, Humberto Rivas, Bernard Plossu, Carlos Canovas, Paco Caparros, Enrique Carrazoni, Pillippe Salaum, Jesús Císcar, Ursula Schultz-Schonburg, Ferran Montenegro, Joan Antoni Vicent and José Manuel Ballester. It also contains works on paper and mixed technique by Gerardo Rueda, Eusebio Sempere, Ramón de Soto, Fernando Zóbel, Javier Chapa, Horacio Silva, Carmen Calvo, Rafael Calduch, Joan Castejón, Gonzalo Chillida, Cai Xiao Song, Javier Calvo, Franco Palazzo, Linda Karshan, Eva Lootz and Albert Ràfols Casamada.

In the ninth room, it is shown a selection of the most important donations of the sculptor Miquel Navarro; some drawings by Vicente Colom, John Davies, Beatriz Gutman, and sculptures by Charles Simmonds and Per Kirkeby can be seen.

In the tenth room there are paintings by Dennis Ashbaugh, Julián Casado, José Sanleón, Soledad Sevilla, Wenzel Ziersch, Alberto Bañuelos and Ramón de Soto.

Gallery number 7
In the seventh gallery we can see some installations and new means of artistic expression with the most conceptual work by Alberto Corazón, installations by Manuel Quejido, Fernando Canovas, Susy Gómez, Guillermo Kuitka, Ángeles Marco, Mar Solís, Natividad Navalón, José Antonio Orts, Ximo Lizana, Esther Pizarro, Ángel Mateo Charris, Vicente Peris, Uiso Alemany, Bernardí Roig, Domingo Sánchez Blanco, Joan Fontcuberta and Eduardo Kac and video-creation by Bigas Luna, Júlio Quaresma or Robert Frank together with works close to the land-art made by Hannsjörg Voth.

Outside the museum sculptures by Vicente Ortí and Eladio de Mora are shown and in the hall we can see a mural by Gerardo Rueda.

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