Normative Art

On March 12, 1960, the First joint exhibition of Spanish normative art was inaugurated at the Ateneo Mercantil in Valencia. This exhibition was organized by the Parpalló Group and coordinated by Valencian critics Vicente Aguilera Cerni and Antonio Giménez Pericás, and featured the participation of Equipo 57, Equipo Córdoba, José Mª Labra and Manuel Calvo. The exhibition displayed works by all of them together with members of the Valencian group: Andreu Alfaro, Eusebio Sempere, Isidro Balaguer, Monjalés and decorator José Martínez Peris. 

The exhibition constituted the culmination of an intense prior process of dialogue and debate among the various art critics, artistic groups and artists who had taken a stand for geometric abstraction in open opposition to informalism. Normative art or normativism was the indigenous label proposed in Spain in the late 1950s, with the intention of creating a broad representative movement, unprecedented in our country, of geometric abstract art heir to neoplasticism, constructivism and the Bauhaus. 

The exhibition on Normative Art is composed of more than 50 works including sculptures, paintings and photographs and commemorates the 50th anniversary of the first exhibition of Spanish Normative Art that took place in Valencia on March 12, 1960. The exhibition displays 12 sculptures, 5 photographs, 5 luminous reliefs, 2 panels, as well as other exhibition elements such as the poster from the 1960 exhibition and a film by Equipo 57.