MACBA Museu d ́Art Contemporani de Barcelona

Galeria Cadaqués. Works of the Bombelli Collection

22 Sep - 27 Nov 2006

Richard Hamilton and his "Sign" at the Bar Melitón. Cadaqués, August 1975
GALERIA CADAQUÉS. WORKS OF THE BOMBELLI COLLECTION

22/09/2006 - 27/11/2006

The Cadaqués Gallery has been important to the region of Catalonia since the 1970s (from local, national, and international perspectives), as it lead, produced and diffused contemporary art of the moment. This fall the MACBA is organizing a presentation of this gallery, its history and milieu, mostly through key works from the collection of its founder, Italian artist and architect Lanfranco Bombellli. The exhibition also analyzes –thanks to documentary materials (photographs, videos, publications...)– Cadaqués’ importance as a center for the 20th century avant garde: from Picasso to Dalí and from Marcel Duchamp to Man Ray, John Cage, Richard Hamilton, and Dieter Roth...all of those artists paid regular visits to Cadaqués.
This exhibition comes to us within the framework of the MACBA Collection and emphasizes its relationship with the gallery’s own program which developed consistently along its four artistic guidelines during its 25 year history: Constructivism (most of all, Swiss Concrete Art), Pop Art, the avant garde of the 60s and 70s (Cage, Hamilton, Roth...), and local artists represented by Catalonian abstract painting and new artistic trends in Catalonia in the 1970s and 1980s. The exhibition demonstrates the heterogeneity of those artists who exhibited their work in the gallery and focuses on the gallery’s role as a catalyst to artistic production during those years.
The Cadaqués Gallery not only incited expositive projects, but works connected to the city of Cadaqués such as Muntadas’ Cadaqués, Canal Local (1973) or Miralda’s Flauta i trampoli (1981), and those produced through the collaborative efforts of Richard Hamilton and Dieter Roth in 1976 and 1978, among others. This emphasis on the idea of production is an exception within a context in which the art market has given mitigated attention to the international panorama of art and its contemporary condition.
The exhibition allows us to inventory and critically revise those years of activity through two peripheries: Southern Europe and a physically small urban nucleus. Marcel Duchamp, John Cage, Richard Hamilton, Dieter Roth, Muntadas, Albert Ràfols Casamada, Max Bill, and Equipo Crònica, among others, are included in the exhibition.
Curator: Roland Groenenboom
Production: Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA)
 

Tags: Max Bill, John Cage, Albert Ràfols Casamada, Equipo Crónica, Marcel Duchamp, Richard Hamilton, Muntadas, Pablo Picasso, Man Ray, Dieter Roth