Elena Asins

Painter, writer, lecturer and art critic. Self-taught in her training, from 1953 onwards she attends painting classes at the School of Arts and Crafts in Madrid, and later at the Circle of Fine Arts and at the School of Ceramics in Madrid. She furthers her studies at the School of Fine Arts in Paris, at the University of Stuttgart, at the Computing Center of the Complutense University of Madrid, at The New School for Social Research and at Columbia University in New York (Department of Computer Science: Computer Art), after being invited to develop research on digital application in the plastic arts.

In 1963 she becomes part of the artistic group Castilla 63 and in 1967 she is one of the members of the Nueva Generación collective. Her work, although it started from figurativism, evolved towards normative art, developing works based on constructive geometric abstraction that from the 1980s onwards she relates to sound creation. Likewise, she is the author of theoretical texts and experimental poetic compositions. Among her texts, the following stand out: Analysis of an Aspect of Mondrian (1969) and Studies and Reflections on Painting (1979).

On the other hand, it is essential to relate her artistic practice to structuralism and computation applied to art, the latter being an area in which she is a pioneer: from 1967, the year in which her first productions in computational art are situated, Elena Asins develops a body of work based on calculation and mathematical relationships of basic structures. Her language transcends the limits of painting and is applied by the artist to both musical creation and urban space, the latter being the field in which she develops her most recent contributions, focused on approaching urbanism as aesthetics and necessity and on spatio-temporal intervention through aesthetics.

Among her individual exhibitions, the following stand out, among others: those held at Galería Espacio, Madrid (1960), at the College of Architects, Zaragoza (1979), Galería Juana de Aizpuru, Seville (1980), Culture Hall in San Lorenzo de El Escorial, Madrid, Spanish Institute, New York (1981), Centre d'Iniciatives i d'Experimentació, Barcelona (1989), Cultural Center of the City, Madrid (1995), and at Ciudadela: Mixed Pavilion and Kilns, Pamplona (1999).

She has participated in group exhibitions, among which the following should be mentioned: Grupo Castilla 63, Galería Amadís, Madrid (1963); Nueva generación, Galería Edurne, Madrid (1967); Formas computables, Computing Center, Complutense University of Madrid (1967); Spanish Constructivists, Galería Kandinsky, Madrid (1975); Form and Measure in Current Spanish Art, Halls of the General Directorate of Fine Arts, Madrid (1977); and Objective Proposals, Galería Fernando Vijande, Madrid (1985).