The exhibition, curated by the Art Department of the ICO Foundation, is made up of different works acquired by the Official Credit Institute (ICO) in the 1990s for the conservation and dissemination of its collections.
The exhibition is an invitation for the public who are enthusiastic about the arts, in particular for the new generations who have not yet had the opportunity to admire Picasso's Vollard Suite, which was last exhibited in its entirety in the capital in 2012, and the work of the artists who left a deep mark on the Spanish art scene at the end of the 20th century.
Picasso's visual universe
The Vollard Suite was the result of a friendly and commercial exchange between the art dealer and gallery owner Ambroise Vollard and Pablo Picasso. Made up of one hundred works made by Pablo Picasso between 1930 and 1937, the Vollard Suite is considered the most important series of contemporary engraving.
In an exploration of different thematic blocks, the three thematic blocks that make up the collection show the evolution in chronological order of Picasso's creative and personal obsessions: The Sculptor's Studio, The Battle of Love, The Minotaur or Portraits of Ambroise Vollard.
In 1937, Ambroise Vollard obtained the initial series of 97 copper engravings of the Suite in exchange for a significant number of paintings that he owned that Picasso wanted for his private collection. The engravings reveal the different techniques used by the Malaga artist in this discipline, such as etching, aquatint, burin or drypoint.
The forging of the history of contemporary Spanish art
Since its inauguration in 1996, the ICO funds, which constitute the collections of Spanish sculpture with drawing, contemporary Spanish painting and engraving that the ICO Museum has, were permanently exhibited until its exhibition specialization in the fields of architecture and photography in 2012.
The new exhibition makes visible the origin of the museum and the ICO Foundation, showing the artistic treasures it preserves, without losing its identity, highlighting its attentive gaze towards contemporary Spanish art.
On the occasion of this exhibition, visitors will also be able to see a total of 54 engravings and 8 paintings by prominent artists, almost all of whom were awarded the National Prize for Plastic Arts in the 1980s and 1990s, such as Juan Manuel Díaz-Caneja, Manuel Boix, Albert Ràfols-Casamada, Joan Hernández Pijuan, Luis Gordillo, José Hernández, Eduardo Arroyo, Rafael Canogar, Josep Guinovart, Lucio Muñoz, Alfonso Fraile, Manolo Valdés, Darío Villalba, José Caballero, Manuel Hernández Mompó, Juan Genovés, Guillermo Pérez Villalta and Juan Barjola.
A mix of engravings and paintings by these renowned artists allows visitors to appreciate the variety of disciplines they practiced and the stylistic constants common to each of their works.
The selection is completed with the series Nine Nocturnal Animals, by Miguel Ángel Campano (National Prize for Plastic Arts in 1996) and the Dadá Collection, by Fernando Bellver (National Prize for Graphic Art in 2008).
Open to the public until July 20, the exhibition will have the usual extensive dissemination program that, through guided tours and dynamic activities, will bring the works and their authors closer to all visitors using the practices that identify the ICO Museum as a constant laboratory for accessibility. In this sense, the exhibition will have materials adapted to the Easy Reading tour, Sign Language Interpreter (ILSE) on demand for all the activities offered, and proposals designed for people with intellectual or developmental disabilities. With the Empower Parents program, now in its twelfth edition at the ICO Museum, new families with children with autism will be welcomed.
