The imaginary museum

Gerardo Rueda (Madrid 1926-1996) belongs to one of the generations of artists most committed to their time and to art, such as Fernando Zóbel, Gustavo Torner or Hernández Mompó. Self-taught, he abandoned his law studies so as to dedicate himself to painting. His first works, marked by a cubist influence, already contained the seeds of what would be his whole subsequent production: order and structure. In fact, the objective that accompanied the whole of his artistic career was to reduce content to its purest essence, dispensing with anecdotes or unnecessary detail, the fruit of an interior need for a space of silence and meditation, but without opting for geometric abstraction. Although the history has placed Rueda in the realm of informalism, with his glance at the classic being understood as not being an interest in antiquity but rather a formal attitude in which monumentality and harmonic structures are highlighted, along with his use of colour as a physical entity, bringing him to occupy his own place within the History of Art. Spain’s representative in the XXX Venice Biennial (1960) and a member of the Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando since 1995, Gerardo Rueda’s weight lies not just in the importance of his work but also in his contribution, along with Fernando Zóbel and Gustavo Torner to the creation of Cuenca’s Museo de Arte Español Abstracto, a key point for the dissemination of new aesthetic proposals developed in Spain in the 50s and 60s and which had a notable influence on subsequent generations of artists. Notable along with Rueda’s artistic facet is his history as a collector, motivated by his liking for travel and his avid approach to exploring and knowing the world around him. Throughout his life he assembled a marvellous set of material objects from diverse places and years, an exhaustive list of which is set out in these two exhibitions held in the IVAM and in the Museo de la Ciudad. Notable among the objects to be found in the artist’s collection are: Japanese boxes from the Edo period (1615- 1868) intended for containing cosmetics or sweets; glass from the xviii to xx centuries; ceramics from Talavera, Puente del Arzobispo or Manises from the xvii to xx centuries; Chinese porcelain from the Sing dynasty (960-1279); wood cabinets with bone and inlay from xvii to xx centuries; Egyptian objects from the dynastic era; sycamore wood dressing table objects made in the xx century; frames and mirrors from the xvii and xviii centuries; etchings by Durer and Rembrandt; sculptures from the Roman era and from the xvi to xviii century; oil on card paintings and, finally, contemporary works, a set of works by friends and companions of the artist such as Fernando Zóbel, Gustavo Torner, Carmen Laffón, Luis Feito, among others. The fruit of an exchange between colleagues. All of these are pieces that are representative of the Spanish artistic moment that they all lived around 1960 and which subsequently had such a repercussion at national and international level.