Fernand Léger and Modern Life is a co-production between IVAM and Tate Liverpool that brings together more than fifty paintings and drawings by the artist, as well as a large-scale photomural, films, graphic designs, books and fabrics. The aim of the exhibition is to show Léger’s unique visual style, which gave life to the intense experience and energy of the Parisian metropolis in the early years of the 20th century. Likewise, the exhibition presents Léger as a politically committed artist, with an unwavering belief in the social function of art for the whole world. The exhibition reflects the liveliness of the modern era, as well as the collaborations of Léger with filmmakers and architects such as Le Corbusier and Charlotte Perriand.
Exhibition curated by Darren Pih, exhibition curator and Laura Bruni, conservation assistant, Tate Liverpool. The exhibition was initially developed by Lauren Barnes, former conservation assistant, Tate Liverpool. Organized in partnership with Tate Liverpool
The exhibition places the works of Julio González (Barcelona, 1876 – Paris, 1942) right at the centre of the aesthetic, political and social debate of his time, seeking to generate a discourse in which all such aspects come together using the artwork and documents that the IVAM has about him and other Avant-garde artists. The project is also intended to approach the artistic and cultural reality of the metropolises where he developed his creative work: Barcelona and Paris.
The exhibition highlights some key moments in his career such as his training in the Catalonian Modernist circle and the relationship with his brother Joan; his friendship with Joaquín Torres-García (Montevideo, Uruguay, 1879-1949) and the contact made with some Cercle et Carré artists, his participation in the Pavilion of the Republic in the 1937 Paris International Exhibition, and the innovative nature of his sculpture starting with his Woman with a mirror (1937).
Conversation on the occasion of the exhibition “1989. The end of the 20th century ” by artists Javier Codesal, José Maldonado and Emilio Martínez, with the curators Sandra Moros and Sergio Rubira.
1989 was a historic year. It put an end to an era defined by the Cold War and confrontations between East and West, between pro-Soviet dictatorships and Western democracies. The exhibition focuses on events such as the fall of the Berlin Wall and the opening of the Eastern Bloc, the AIDS crisis and the cultural wars that followed the conservative wave in the United States and Europe, the beginning of the end of Apartheid in South Africa, and the development of multiculturalism as a concept before globalisation.
As the backdrop to the foundation of the IVAM, the project gives an overview of art production in 1989 using key events from that very year as a starting point and making visible the meta-narratives that emerged at the time.
Of a documentary nature and related to the exhibition Times of upheaval, the show finds matter and memory connections in the works of three Valencian writers, Max Aub (Paris, 1903-Mexico City, 1972), Eduardo Hervás (Valencia, 1950-1972) and Rafael Chirbes (Tavernes de la Valldigna, Valencia, 1949-2015). Despite their different generations and historical realities, they had issues, subjects and resources in common. All three authors are almost ‘on the verge of falling into oblivion’, since they are better known abroad than here.
Documentation on each one of them is complemented by an interpretation of the works of Aub, Hervás and Chirbes by artist Chema López (Albacete, 1969) in his paintings.
The cartoonist Paco Roca (Valencia, 1969), National Comic Award in 2008 for his graphic novel Arrugas (2007), has developed a specific project for gallery 6 of the IVAM. A bet that analyzes and expands the expressive possibilities of comics as an artistic discipline, within the discourse consolidated around the ninth art by the Valencian Institute of Modern Art.
The comic will leave the comfort of the page of paper so that the walls of the room are the blank space by which to spread, occupying the G6 gallery and taking life to overflow the own room and claim the art of the comic all over the Museum.
The beginnings of Paco Roca as an illustrator were linked to advertising and graphic design, to subsequently develop a successful career in the comic field, from the pages of the magazine El Víbora, where he published his first stories have led him to harvest the most important awards of the comic with his graphic novels. Although his work has starred in several anthological exhibitions, El Dibujado is his first project developed directly for a museum.
This new look at the IVAM Collection will set out from one of its central nuclei, Pop Art, especially British Pop Art and the Spanish forms of realism, in order to expand the concept of realism to which they were related. It will include works by artists who shared the need to use the techniques and images of mass culture and manipulate the iconography produced by the industrial societies in order to question them.
The show will be organised thematically in sections ranging from the historical, including works about the Spanish Civil War, images of repression and the iconography of the dictators, the image of the hero and its construction, and the development of micropolitics with the introduction of the feminist movements, the visibility of dissident identities that do not fit in with the hetero norm, and the inclusion of other identities constructed as a negative reflection of the West.
The exhibition is arranged in six large areas: “Violence and Power”; “Hidden Worlds”; “Duchamp and the world of objects”; “Questioning of Images”; “Dissident Bodies”; and “Urban Peripheries”. They will include a large number of works from the IVAM Collection by artists such as Eduardo Arroyo, Robert Rauschenberg, Bruce Nauman, Hadjithomas & Joreige, Martha Rosler, Rula Halawani, Equipo Crónica, Darío Villalba, Luis Gordillo, Benjamín Palencia, André Masson, James Rosenquist, Dora García, Carmen Calvo, Jasper Johns, Katharina Fritsch, Claes Oldenburg, Richard Prince, Victoria Civera, John Baldessari, Öyvind Fahlström, Antoni Muntadas, Gillian Wearing, Cindy Sherman, VALIE EXPORT, Annette Messager, Esther Ferrer, Pierre Molinier, Ahlam Shibli, Pepe Espaliú, Michel Journiac, Claude Cahun, Guillermo Kuitca, Rogelio López Cuenca, Francesc Ruiz, Mona Hatoum, Yto Barrada and Nadia Benchallal, among others.
On the occasion of the exhibition Inhabiting the Mediterranean, the IVAM presents a film cycle that combines a careful selection of films about the 20th century with the presence of several specialists, seeking to enrich and expand reflection about the exhibition’s subject: cities as physical and mental spaces that shape the way we are, both individually and collectively, and the Mediterranean as a meeting point for neighbouring cultures or as an exclusion border.
SESSION 1
Saturday 2 February, from 11.30 am to 2.00 pm
On the coast: Mediterranean landscapes
Du côté de la côte, Agnès Varda, 1959. 24 min
Méditerranée, Jean-Daniel Pollet, 1963. 45 min
Bassae, Jean-Daniel Pollet, 1964. 10 min
Méditerranées, Olivier Py, 2010. 32 min
SESSION 2
Saturday 2 February, from 6.00 to 9.00 pm
Gods and monsters: the presence of the past
Le mépris, Jean-Luc Godard, 1963. 103 min
SESSION 3
Sunday 3 February, from 11.30 am to 2.00 pm
Port to port: Mediterranean cities
Impressions du port de Marseille, László Moholy-Nagy, 1929. 9 min
À propos de Nice, Jean Vigo, 1930. 25 min
Vibración en Granada, José Val del Omar, 1935. 20 min
SESSION 4
Sunday 3 February, from 6.00 to 9.00 pm
Where the city changes its name
Atlal, Djamel Kerkar, 2017. 111 min
The IVAM (Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno) opened in 1989. It was the first modern and contemporary art museum project fostered in Spain following the country’s devolution and the need to acknowledge and promote art and culture.
The exhibition tells us how the IVAM came about and who the process stakeholders were, delving into identity features such as the collections and the building. The context in which the museum was created is also a key element in the exhibition, making its local framework and circumstances visible. Likewise, the contents of the case study are connected to the international scene through the exhibition 1989. The end of the 20th century.
1989 was a historic year. It put an end to an era defined by the Cold War and confrontations between East and West, between pro-Soviet dictatorships and Western democracies. The exhibition focuses on events such as the fall of the Berlin Wall and the opening of the Eastern Bloc, the AIDS crisis and the cultural wars that followed the conservative wave in the United States and Europe, the beginning of the end of Apartheid in South Africa, and the development of multiculturalism as a concept before globalisation.
As the backdrop to the foundation of the IVAM, the project gives an overview of art production in 1989 using key events from that very year as a starting point and making visible the meta-narratives that emerged at the time.
The project created for the façade of the IVAM by Soledad Sevilla (Valencia, 1944) is based on a persistent memory from her teenage years in Valencia: the geometric tiles that cover the wall of the cloister at The Patriarch’s Church (Iglesia del Patriarca). Yet it is not by chance that she chose such an image; it has to do with the close links between the selected object, the building, and the city itself.
As the artist points out: “We don’t realize it but we’re always remembering things… Our memories determine our vision and make it possible.” It was this realization and the suggestions and connections it triggered that made this intervention come true on the museum’s front wall.
La presència de la coreògrafa i ballarina Sol Picó en el programa Posar el Cos té com a peça fonamental el desenvolupament del taller Halab realitzat en col·laboració amb el Conservatori Superior de Dansa de València i amb el Conservatori Professional de Dansa de València.
Una selecció d’alumnes de tots dos Conservatoris dirigits per Sol Picó realitzaran aquest taller coreogràfic que tindrà com a resultat final la interpretació de la peça Halab en l’IVAM el dia 20 de desembre a les 19.00 h. i en la seu IVAM Alcoi el dia 22 a les 18.00 h.
Guided tours to exhibitions by Pilar Martínez, BA Art History
Visits:
SUNDAY December 2nd Ángeles Marco. Vertigo
