Pablo Picasso spans almost a century of art and alongside him, an essential series of artists radically transform the history of art while blurring the boundaries between figuration and abstraction. Many of them are represented here.

The 20th Century Art Collection holds among its holdings a large number of works on paper including drawings, engravings, lithographs and silkscreens that complete an extensive roster of essential artists, traversing the most suggestive territories of the artistic framework of the past century. 
And it is so because Eusebio Sempere and his companion Abel Martín, after experimenting in Paris with various printing techniques, introduced artistic silkscreen printing to Spain, creating beautiful prints of their own works and those of their artist friends. And they are deeply convinced that graphic work deserves the status of "original" and that it places contemporary art within reach of a majority of the public, democratizing it.

With that aesthetic and political conviction, Sempere always admired the figure of Pablo Picasso. He acquired Picasso's engraving belonging to the Vollard Suite, Fernando Zóbel gave him the Portrait of Rimbaud as a gift, and he bought The Burial of the Count of Orgaz, works that are shown here. In the same way that he participated in the Homage to Picasso that took place during the celebration of the artist's 90th birthday in November 1971, suffering as a result detention, imprisonment and a substantial economic fine. 

Since 2017, the Department of Education, Culture and Sport has maintained a line of acquisition of artworks with the dual purpose of stimulating the contemporary art market, while also gathering a collection of works representative of the current artistic scene in our Community. Different generations and sensibilities that approach the artistic creation process, offering new perspectives on our closest world.

A selection of three pieces by three artists: Paloma Navares, Teresa Lanceta and Amparo Tormo can be enjoyed at the MACA.

The Shortest Night is a collective exhibition that emerges as a collaborative proposal between both galleries and the museum, opening a dialogue around the idea of transformation in creative, artistic, and vital processes.

As an effort to promote new forms of art production and exhibition, the show is carried out in a transversal and concomitant manner across the three venues of the galleries in Madrid and Alicante and the MACA, with works displayed organically among them, taking conceptual and aesthetic criteria above the representation of the galleries as a real exercise in institutional synergy.

The Shortest Night delves into transformation as a process of resignification that promotes regeneration, transmutation, change, and renewal, considering the difficult times we are living in and making reference to the traditions of Saint John, a time in which a change of season takes place whose tradition consists of making way for the new, renewed, and transformed.

The Museum of Contemporary Art in Alicante presents in this exhibition two works by Eulàlia Valldosera: The Fall. Leaving the Flames to Fall into the Embers from 1996 and Family Ties from 2012. 

The Fall is a fundamental work in the artist's trajectory, a complex and enigmatic installation that speaks of an emotional accident, a descent into the underworld, the impossibility of escaping a situation even when attempting different behaviors. The very questioning of a couple in their domestic environment, a story devoid of narration that unfolds in the space where the spectator finds themselves trapped as both witness and architect of the problem. 

Family Ties is a series of photographs of intimacy and reveals the visible and hidden emotional relationships that family members experience, enjoy, or suffer. Complex and inevitable implications that redefine the very model of family in continuous transformation. Love, protection, or mutual care becomes tinged with hatred, absence, jealousy, or abuse in a highly fragmented emotional labyrinth.

In both works, the drama is in plain sight. Recovered. The facts are not narrated, but rather represented. Through reality and its shadow, through the projection of light and movement. With her own perspective, Valldosera recreates dramatized scenes that simultaneously reflect presence and absence, memory and desire, where the shadow evokes an inner search that refers to the world of the subconscious, not only as a specter of an unresolved past, but also as an authentic form of reality. 

Juana Concepción Francés de la Campa (Alicante, 1924 - Madrid, 1990) is one of the most forceful artists in the Spanish artistic panorama of the second half of the twentieth century, a pioneer of abstract informalism and the only woman in the emblematic El Paso Group. She exhibited in important international artistic events such as three Hispano-American Biennials, the Venice Biennale, in as many as five editions, and the São Paulo Biennale. She exhibited in group shows alongside her generation's peers at the Guggenheim Museum in New York and at the Tate Gallery in London, and in notable solo exhibitions at institutions in Spain, France, and Portugal, among other places. She was recognized by critics from her early figurative period through the end of her career, but has been forgotten by art historiography. In recent years, her figure has been strongly reclaimed, affirming her quality and relevance, and at the MACA we have delved deeper into separate exhibitions on her abstract paintings. 
 

Now we propose to review the origins of her painting: the years of training, her more symbolist figurative period, and her personal transition before embarking on the generational adventure of abstract art. It is the least known period: paintings where figurative work of Italianate influence moves between restrained symbolism and surrealism with metaphysical roots, featuring rounded and voluminous figures of geometric character. Among the themes presented are maternities, portraits of children and women, families, and enigmatic still lifes as well as allegorical scenes that present an air of intriguing mysticism and that contain a spirituality that we will see emerge in later periods. On a technical level, Francés works innovatively to achieve certain textures and impastos using the encaustic technique, where she mixes wax, resin, and solvent on a rigid support, superimposing different layers of paint to "wound" them afterward with a nail. An experimental will that remains intact throughout her entire career, marking her strong plastic personality. 
 

Juana Francés is the most prominent of a group of women artists who began exhibiting in the 1950s and whose professional determination defied the society of her time: an exclusionary system that relegated women to the domestic sphere or to decorative roles in culture. Facing a hostile, normative, and rigid environment created by the social ideology of Francoism, Juana Francés managed to remain attentive to plastic concerns and to be an active part of a generation of artists who revolutionized the art of their time. Her trajectory allows us today to rethink the role of women in art history, as well as the complex relationship between aesthetic modernity and social commitment.
 

Opening. Beyond the Maps is the title of the first exhibition of the Michael Jenkins and Javier Romero Collection at MACA. It includes forty-nine artists from different generations and nationalities from among the one hundred sixty-two that make up the collection, with works spanning from the late sixties to the present day, seeking a balance between historical figures or artists with long careers and younger artists. 

Opening because it initiates and serves as an introduction to a more extensive collection that seeks to eliminate not only geographical hierarchies, but also hierarchies of disciplines and artistic media, generational boundaries, gender or identity, individual or group work, or hierarchies that could be applied to the diversity of formal or conceptual approaches in art to offer a vision that goes beyond maps, beyond any kind of preestablished and hermetic artistic boundary. Opening our perspective.

The proposed selection reflects the variety of themes and narratives that artists have been exploring in the social and political context, in order to stimulate critical thinking and offer a clearer and more faithful image of reality. We also wanted to highlight the high presence of women artists in the collection and they constitute half of the artists included in this presentation. We have also selected several artists of color from the notable group whose works are represented in the collection. Finally, it was important to highlight the presence of artists from Alicante, for which we have included the work of ten of them in order to create a reading that, aspiring to the global, understands the local, the closest, as fundamental.

Thus, trying to eliminate chronological and territorial boundaries, we propose that in this first installation artists from different generations and geographical contexts coexist and that cross-dialogues be constructed between the selected works. Let this serve as an introduction.
 

He is the most internationally renowned artist from Alicante and one of the most genuine Spanish representatives of geometric abstraction and optical and kinetic trends. His work is the fruit of continuous and rigorous work on geometry, movement and optical illusion, in which he also develops, from composition and form, a lyrical poetics of singular beauty.

The Eusebio Sempere Municipal Collection is made up of works by the Alicante artist that the Alicante City Council has acquired from 1978 to the present day. It consists of 575 pieces including drawings, paintings, sculptures and graphic works. Chronologically, this set of works spans a very extensive period of Sempere's production: from the early 1940s (drawings and oils) to the first modern works the artist created in Paris in the 1950s (a wide selection of watercolors and gouaches), continuing with the paintings on panel from the 1960s so characteristic of his production and sculptures in iron and chrome-plated steel, typical of his work in the 1970s. Likewise, it includes an important selection of silkscreens and lithographs that showcases the most singular aspects of his graphic work. This is a collection that traces the creative evolution of one of the most interesting personalities in the Spanish art scene of the second half of the twentieth century. It is—moreover—an authentic tribute to Sempere, protagonist of one of the most generous acts toward the city of Alicante: the donation of his art collection… a lifetime.

From the Essential to the Indispensable

The Twentieth Century Art Collection donated by Eusebio Sempere to the city of Alicante is the cornerstone of this new Museum of Contemporary Art in Alicante. It is composed of 177 pieces including sculptures, paintings, drawings and graphic works, dated from the twenties to the early eighties and is the result of a most rigorous work of selection and acquisition of works by the greatest artists of modernity and the avant-gardes of the past century.

The Collection treasures authentic masterpieces that represent the main names and movements of Spanish art, where it reaches its highest peaks. With a decided international vocation, its creator, Eusebio Sempere, makes clear his great sensitivity, vision of the future and above all, his will to disseminate the aesthetic values of twentieth-century art.

Some of the most important creators of our century are represented here: Picasso, Braque, Julio González, Juan Gris, Gargallo, Delaunay, Arp, Cocteau, Chagall, Giacometti, Miró, Dalí, Max Ernst, Calder, Bacon, Matta, Fautrier, Clavé, Tàpies, Chillida, Millares, Saura, Vasarely, Agam, Soto, Rosenquist, Oldenburg, Rauschenberg, Adami, Dine… among others. But it is in the realm of Spanish twentieth-century art where we find the best works of the Collection and a more extensive range of trends, movements and significant groups of avant-garde art in our country with works by Alberto Sánchez, Ferrant, Palazuelo, Guerrero, Viola, Feito, Rivera, Canogar, Juana Francés, Pablo Serrano, Alfaro, Guinovart, Ràfols Casamada, Hernández Pijuán, Farreras, Manrique, Mompó, Torner, Rueda, Zóbel, Lucio Muñoz, Equipo Crónica, Julio López Hernández or Genovés, among others…

An impressive display of paintings, sculptures, mixed media works, drawings, engravings, lithographs and silkscreens completes the extensive list of indispensable artists, traversing the most suggestive territories of the artistic framework of the past century.

The MACA now has the piece "Objeto-idea" by Arcadio Blasco on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of his death. The work has been deposited for a period of five years by José Piqueras, and has been on display since today on the ground floor of the museum. The artist

Arcadi Blasco Pastor (Mutxamel, Alicante, 1928 – Majadahonda, Madrid, 2013) was a painter who in the second half of the 1950s found in ceramics the ideal material for plastic expression. His artistic training as a painter took place at the School of Fine Arts in Madrid, where he arrived at the age of 19, completing his teaching course at the School of Fine Arts of San Carlos in Valencia in 1953. That same year he moved to Italy, where he lived for two years at the Academy of Spain in Rome, where he had his first contact with ceramics through the work of Nino Caruso and Carlo Zauli.

Upon returning to Spain, he carried out his first ceramic experiments and became interested in artisanal ceramics, which led him to work with the potter from Cuenca, Pedro Mercedes—with whom he exchanged knowledge—and in other popular ceramic workshops in Agost and Triana (Cerámica Montalbán). In 1955 he set up his first workshop in a space—ceded by architect Luis Feduchi—the half-built building of the Museum of America located in the University City of Madrid, which he shared with José Luis Sánchez, Jacqueline Canivet and Carmen Perujo; there he would create, among other works, many stained glass windows, mosaics and ceramic murals intended, in large part, to decorate the churches that were built by commission of the Institute for the Colonization of the Towns of Spain, collaborating with architects José Luis Fernández del Amo, Ignacio Gárate, Luis Cubillo, García Benito, Luis Feduchi, Fernández Alba and Fisac, among others. The immense space of this place of work for creativity was also occasionally used by painters such as José Vento, Hernández Mompó, Rafael Canogar, Antonio Saura, etc., who needed to create large-format works and did not have sufficient space in their studios. This provisional workshop became a meeting place for artists of the young Madrid avant-garde.

Precisely, one of the most notable characteristics of Arcadio Blasco's trajectory as a ceramicist is his direct participation, between the years 1945 and 1974, in the new development of contemporary art, as he was—as Carmen González has rightly pointed out—"the only ceramic artist who, through a series of 'coincidences'"—as he himself defines them—participates in the field of plastic arts, and who has held a large number of national and international exhibitions in contemporary art forums, always bringing ceramic work.

After an initial direct approach to ceramic work, which consisted of using the surface of vessels as a support for his pictorial vocabulary—creating works with a certain decorative charge—Arcadio Blasco felt strongly attracted to the qualities and expressiveness of this material, and as a consequence his Ceramic Paintings (1956-64) were born.

In all his subsequent work cycles: Idea Objects (1969), Ornamental Proposals (1969-74), Architectures and Walls to Defend Oneself from Fear (1970-86), Archaeological Ruins (1984-86), Mill Wheels to Commune (1985), Tributes (1992-95), clays of different tones, slips, glazes—less frequent and very nuanced—and applications of coloring oxides in earthy tones will be—often subjected to reduction firing—the protagonist materials of his works.

In that whirlwind of searches that the 1950s became for the most nonconformist Spanish artists, Arcadio Blasco investigated the possibilities of ceramic material and found in fired clay the ideal medium with which to realize in volume his latest pictorial investigations, which would lead—in ceramics—at the end of the 1960s to reliefs and sculptures of social commitment and political criticism.

With his return in 1985 to his birthplace (Mutxamel) and the installation of his workshop in a country house in the Bonalba area, Alicante, an artist in full maturity returned who made an effort to activate Alicante's culture through various initiatives, some related to ceramics and its teaching.

Some of these "Idea-Objects" from the late sixties were shown in the Arcadio Blasco exhibition at the Spanish Pavilion of the XXXV Venice Biennale in June 1970, and were the prelude to his "Ornamental Proposals for Dialogue" and "Proposals for Torture," series to which fundamental works of his artistic production from the early seventies belong, such as "Enclosure for a Legal Murder" from the MACA collection.

Ceramics is the protagonist and the reliefs begin to wrap around themselves, to want to hide, acquiring a more sculptural and even architectural aspect with the insertion of usable openings. These works are crafted with artisanal meticulousness through a set of very personal resources: touches and impressions like cuneiform and repetitive writing; rows of balls or pearls of clay added and of different sizes; necklace beads or radiations as if they were pieces of goldwork from ancient cultures, refined and barbaric at once, with all kinds of roughness and reliefs where the matter still seems to boil.

Vásárhelyi Győző, the artist's real name (Pécs, Hungary, April 9, 1906 – Annet-sur-Marne, France, March 15, 1997). He studied medicine in Hungary, but left the career after two years. He then became interested in abstract art and Bauhaus teaching in Budapest. He moved to Paris in the early 1930s and worked there as a graphic designer. In this city he developed his first major work, Zebra, which is considered today the first work of Op art.

He worked in advertising and decoration until 1940. He held his first exhibition at the Denise René gallery, to which he would always remain connected. His work is based on geometric abstraction and the interaction of colors to create a sense of movement and he was the greatest representative of op-art.

In 1955 he published his Yellow Manifesto, a theory about two-dimensional plastic art and kinetic art. Vasarely developed his own model of geometric abstract art, using various materials but using a minimum number of forms and colors. His work gave him international fame and he received several prestigious awards.

This piece, property of the Provincial Council of Alicante, extends its stay at the MACA as an invited piece, as part of the kinetic space of the 20th Century Art Collection, where another work by this Hungarian artist is exhibited: "Kroa B", 1971 (sculpture in anodized and polychrome metal).

The sensation of movement is the common element of the works that make up this Room. The mutual, physical and emotional relationship established between the viewer and the work is a mouvement émouvant [moving movement], as Vasarely describes it in 1955: the works are living bodies that are reflected in the moving body of the viewer and enter into relationship with him, making him a participant.

Vásárhelyi Győző, the artist's real name (Pécs, Hungary, April 9, 1906 – Annet-sur-Marne, France, March 15, 1997). He studied medicine in Hungary, but left the career after two years. He then became interested in abstract art and Bauhaus teaching in Budapest. He moved to Paris in the early 1930s and worked there as a graphic designer. In this city he developed his first major work, Zebra, which is considered today the first work of Op art.

Working in advertising and decoration until 1940, he held his first exhibition at the Denise René gallery, to which he would always remain associated. His work is based on geometric abstraction and the interaction of colors to create a sense of movement and he is the greatest representative of op-art. In 1955 he published his Yellow Manifesto, a theory about two-dimensional plastic art and kinetic art. Vasarely developed his own model of geometric abstract art, using various materials but using a minimum number of forms and colors. His work gave him international fame and he received several prestigious awards.

The Vasarely Museum in Hungary contains an important collection of his works, as well as many other artists of Hungarian origin who have worked abroad. He is the father of artist Yvaral, author of works in that same style.

If the idea of plastic art had so far resided in artisanal management and in the myth of the "unique work", it now lies in the conception of a possibility of RECREATION, of MULTIPLICATION and of EXPANSION. •

Does the immense dissemination of literary or musical work occur to the detriment of its uniqueness and quality? • The majestic chain of the fixed image in two dimensions goes from Lascaux to the abstract works… the future holds for us the happiness of a new plastic beauty, in movement and moving.