When form was a matter of State

When form was a matter of State.Comments on the exhibition: Art in a Barren Land 1939-1959 curated by Nacho París.Friday, November 18 at 6:30 p.m. Free admission until capacity is reachedEarly Francoism—whether Falangist or National Catholic—had a determined cultural endeavor: first more of empire, crucifix and race, of academic or popular art, and later more Spanish and mystical, avant-garde and international. But that State—praying to God and striking with the hammer—prohibited or promoted, always decidedly, certain artistic forms or others as it saw fit. That was a fundamental part of its policies, whether for indoctrination or internationalization. And in those script changes, it found the determined support of the American friend—welcome Mr. Marshall, Hiroshima and Nagasaki—who was also fiercely committed to demonstrating, through art, that capitalism was the natural territory of individual freedom. For less time than Francoism enjoyed did Hitler's Germany—a tyrant who had dreamed of being an artist and from whom Oskar Kokoschka snatched a scholarship in Vienna—develop its fierce classicist cultural project, of extermination and "degenerate art."They were convulsive times, terribly violent, that ended the lives of many, that pushed so many into exile. (And another State cultural project, that of Cárdenas' Mexico, would be a refuge, a new home for artists and intellectuals). Times in which science, culture and reason of state walked hand in hand with horror, leaving a hangover of astonishment and skepticism toward the Western civilizing project. Times in which art was radically conditioned by history and political thought.Nacho ParísDilettante, art enthusiast (still without knowing what it is or when it happens), has coincided with it by interpreting various roles that time and fortune have proposed to him: that of student, that of spectator, that of artist, that of theorist, that of critic and writer, that of activist, that of transporter and exhibition installer and that of curator or curator—as one prefers—. (And very briefly and with little success that of pedagogue). Consequently he has drawn, photographed, edited videos, has written and spoken, has hung his own paintings and those of others and organized some of his own and others' exhibitions. And in all of this, so as not to feel alone, he has created and participated in various collectives.