Rebellion and discipline: an exaltation of Canarian contemporary art

Santa Cruz de Tenerife,

Draw a history of the Canarian art in the twentieth century attending to its groups and, fundamentally, from its collections. This is the objective of the new sample in ASD. Tenerife Space of the Arts, which brings together half a work of two hundred authors and that has been curated by a number of curators corresponding to the size of its tour: Alejandro Castañeda Expósito, Néstor Delgado Morales, José Manuel González Reyes, Isidro Hernández Gutiérrez, Sara Lima, Débora Madrid Brito, Emilio Ramal Since last summer.

“Rebellion and discipline. A possible history of the groups of artists from the Canary Islands from the Tea collection” is the greatest exhibition in the seventeen years of history of this Tenerife Museum and has established that criterion of attention to creative groups, rather than individual figures, to explore the importance of collective efforts and the wealth of their links, coincidences and tensions; In sum, of the debates about art in the last century.

It is structured in different cases of study (from the Luján Pérez school, paper bow. Art Gazetteeven those dedicated to still in force, such as Limonera, Neoblanditas, House Antillón and Storm and Drunk) and attention is paid to very different disciplines, including architecture, cartoon, comic and cinema. Although most of the pieces come from those collections of the TEA, and the CFIT and their archives of the Documentation and Art Library Center, we also have loans from peninsular and Canary institutions and some protagonist groups have created proposals for the occasion, such as Casa Antillón, Neoblanditas and Limonera.

Three chronological sections articulate, in the same way, the route (corresponding to periods 1918-1950, 1950-1970 and 1970-2025) and these, in turn, are subdivided into thematic chapters in which, fleeing strict criteria, some of the works breaks with the established stages and several assemblies favor contextualization.

Rebellion and discipline. A possible history of the groups of artists from the Canary Islands from the TEA collection. TORCH. Tenerife Arts Space

The project begins deepening the artistic treatment of the landscape and the exploitation of the field. We will see images of the Northern Agricultural Union (the first one constituted in Tenerife to recover the exploitation of the land before, especially British); An intervention by Casa Antillón, collective of architects, which allows to see in an unprecedented way the two faces of a double work by Juan Ismael of 1934 -whose obverse shows a landscape of southern Granadilla-; and works of the Vallecas School, as is known closely to the reunion with the Spanish landscape, to which the Lanzarote Pancho Lasso belonged.

We will contemplate then creations of groups such as paper bow ties, Bauhaus furniture in memory of the exhibition starring Eduardo Westerdahl in the Circle of Fine Arts, and the projection of Ghost ArchipelagoDailo Barco, composed from the trace of the one considered as the first fiction film of the history of cinema in the Canary Islands: The thief of white glovesdirected by José González Rivero. The publication has been endowed with its own room Art Gazettewhere together with their numbers, works reproduced in them are exhibited in temporary order.

The artists who allowed themselves to influence surrealism in Paris and those in which the civil war or economic command impacted are equally present in “rebellion and discipline.” The TEA exposes Canarian compositionby Felo Monzón, made in the Gando concentration camp, or drawings that Antonio Torres carried out in Fayffes; Magazines of both sides, by Bonnin or Juan Ismael; and works of Arencibia and Santiago Santana. In response to the economic command of the Canary Islands, in force from 1941 to 1946, work from Bonnin, Guezala and Aguiar (including the portrait of the architect Marrero Regalado), the PIC and LADAC groups, photographs of Nieves Lugo and Fernando Torres Romero and projections of projections and projections of Tirmaby Paolo Moffa and Carlos Serrano de Osma, and Hysterical Chronicle: The conquest of Tenerifefirst work of the Neura team.

The section centered on the 1950-1970 period starts with the Altamira School, in which the aforementioned Westyhl found the possibility of adding again to an avant-garde group with international development. The step is also represented (with thousands works), space and our art, culminating that section with works of the 12 (Eva Fernández, Lola Massieu, Jane Millares, Manón, Birgitta Bergh, Vicki Penfold, Carla Prina, Tamvelius and Maud Westerdahl), who presented together in 1965 Tenerife, in which it would be the first exhibition integrated only by women in the Canary Islands and the second throughout Spain.

“Rebellion and discipline” ends studying ties, in Tardofranchism and transition, between the Canary Islands and Africa and the presence in the art of the moment of the rural world. It also analyzes the influence that some Canarian groups, such as Zaj, had with other internationals (in that case of Zaj, with Fluxus). Works by Maribel Nazco, Cándido Camacho, Lola del Castillo, Esther Ferrer, Juan Hidalgo and María Laura Benavente, in addition to posters of the Conca Hall and the Warehouse and projections on the birth of Underground cinema in the Canary Islands, with references to the Yaiza Borges collective.

Advancing towards the eighties, we will meet Space P (Pedro Garhel and Rosa Galindo) and we will see works by Concha Jerez and the Chamber (Adrián Alemán, José Herrera, Luis Palmero and Carlos Matallana), a group that returned to abstraction and postminimalism.

Finally, in the nineties, Creations of Carmela García or Alexis W. Yapci Ramos … will allusion to the community and identity crises and the role of the new institutions will be examined, such as the Caam de las Palmas, the Faculty of Fine Arts, the Critical Academy or the same TEA, open in 2008. Around the model of its headquarters, designed by Herzog & de Meuron, we will appreciate works of spaces and collectives Artistic arising from that year of starting the economic crisis, such as the apartment, Solar, Office for Urban Action, Limonera or Storm and Drunk.

The most recent collective represented in this sample is neo -Londites and their concerns are also very contemporary: cyberspace and digital culture.