The set in bidding, next December 18, takes us on a journey through the fascinating Second Avant-Garde, up to the latest trends that have burst onto the market in recent decades. Artists of the stature of Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Sol Lewitt, Sean Scully, Jean Marc Bustamante, Tania Bruguera, accompany us on this journey.
Around the decade of the 1940s, a vibrant period in the history of art began, whose imprint on the world of creativity has had a decisive influence on the future development of artistic practice. The Second Avant-Garde brought with it a second wave of innovation, rupture and transgression, leading us on a stimulating journey through an absolutely transformative 20th century. The political and cultural crisis, which shook Europe after the Second World War, favored that the world’s artistic capital, which until then had been Paris, moved to New York. However, the polarity between both creative centers energized and encouraged the artistic practice of this fertile and creatively intense period, in which different styles and movements followed one another at a frenetic pace.
As the standard bearer of one of these movements that, like pop art, revolutionized the traditional conception of what was considered a work of art, we cannot fail to mention Andy Warhol. The silk-screen print on tender “Kiku”, made in 1983, is part of a very particular series by Warhol, for in it he separates himself from his most exploited and trivialized image by the media. “Kiku” is one of the artist’s most visually suggestive series, where Warhol was inspired by the Japanese chrysanthemum, a symbol of longevity, perfection and elegance in Japanese culture.
In the 80’s, the movement that would become, together with pop art, an icon of the 80’s culture also emerged: street art. With Keith Haring and Andy Warhol as visible heads, both styles became an authentic cultural revolution that defined the society of an entire era. However, unlike Warhol, Haring took art to the social and political arena, because unlike the former, he was committed to the problems of minorities. The work we show, with its prototypical schematic figures, which intertwine with each other forming almost a single body, sends a message of supreme freedom, full of fraternity, solidarity and optimism.
Within the abstract proposals, minimalism and geometric abstraction emerged as a reaction to the emotional intensity and gesturality of abstract expressionism. Among the most outstanding representatives, it is worth mentioning the figure of Sean Scully who, through geometry, linked the tradition of Piet Mondrian’s cold abstraction with Mark Rothko’s color field painting.
Likewise, the irruption of minimalism with Sol Lewitt, as one of its greatest exponents, will bring together a mixture of several previous currents, whose main ingredient is the postulates of Bauhaus and Russian constructivism. The gouache in tender is an example of the importance that Lewitt will give to the line, whose fluidity, freedom and playful sense will become more evident in series such as Squiggly Brushstrokes and Wavy Lines.
Regarding the most current practices, we highlight the work of French artist Jean-Marc Bustamante who, since he burst into the artistic context in 1977, has occupied a privileged place in contemporary European art. His work is born of transitional spaces, where the geometric and the organic, the industrial and the artisanal, the cold and the warm merge to explore the limits of the pictorial.
Finally, and as an example of the transgressive character that defines today’s artistic practice, we cannot forget Tania Bruguera. The photograph of “El peso de la culpa” (The weight of guilt) corresponds to a performance carried out on May 4, 1997 at her home in Old Havana. In it, as in many of her works, the Cuban-born artist examines the nature of political power structures and their impact on the most vulnerable groups in society.
Along with them, and as an expression of the creative diversity that has enriched the artistic practice of the last century, artists such as Joan Miró, Antoni Clavé, Salvador Dalí, Loló Soldevilla, Pierre Gonnard, Ana Laura Alaez, Antonio Lopez, Jaume Plensa, Sylvia Bachli or Jorge Galindo complete the set in bidding.
