Opening: Thursday, May 14, 18:00 – 21:00
Exhibition text by Antoni Ferrer
C A S S T L is pleased to present for the first time in Belgium the work of the celebrated Spanish artist collective Equipo 57, curated by Antoni Ferrer.
Founded in 1957, Equipo 57 represented a real anomaly in the post-war Spanish artistic context dominated by a nationalistic, academic and ultra-conservative cultural milieu aligned with the existent Francoist regime. To an almost inexistent artistic scene devoid of cultural relevance, the experimental nature of the work of Equipo 57 stands out not only for the results of their artistic investigations but for their radical approach to art making, that encompassed the social, cultural and political fields. In a short-lived period of about five years, and with approximately eight public apparitions, their contribution to the theory of art, design and architecture was quite exceptional, most notably when it came to the idea of achieving a true synthesis of the arts and its integration with real life.
Formed between Córdoba and Paris, Equipo 57 early artistic positions were close to Constructivism, Neoplasticism and Concretism, and ideologically aligned with Socialism. Although such influences were softened throughout the years, their practice never lost its utopian character, which among other things understood the figure of the artist as an active social agent with a role in society. While most of their theories and projects were never actually implemented due to lack of resources, harsh conditions and the perpetual physical dispersion of their members, they nonetheless strived to bring their works to fruition through manifestos, exhibitions, projects and conferences. At the core of their theoretical preoccupations was the social function of art and the responsibility of artists. It is important to note that they considered themselves as an equipo (team) not a group (a compendium of individuals), precisely because they believed in the capacity of working communally with a true collaborative spirit. Directly related to the later there was their express renunciation to the individual authorship of the works made collectively, hence signing only as Equipo 57.
Equipo 57 official members were Juan Cuenca, Ángel Duarte, José Duarte, Agustín Ibarrola and Juan Serrano. While they initially shared similar ideas about the social value of art, it was the artistic and political effervescence of Paris in the 1950s that acted as catalyst to initiate their shared trajectory. Although we now consider Equipo 57 as a closed group of five members, in the early days there were other artists involved that intermittently contributed to the development of their theories and artworks. It was not until 1958 that the final list of members was definitely completed. This early porousness highlights how their associative nature was a fundamental element since the very beginning.
Equipo 57 first public appearance took place at Cafe Rond Point in Paris in 1957. Besides the actual artworks on display, which predominantly consisted of oil paintings executed individually with a strong visual affinity to constructivist Machinism, the exhibition also acted as a statement. The combative text that accompanied the exhibition clearly positioned the young group of artists in opposition to other artistic tendencies, specially against the dominant Informalism, and the art market at large. Being materialists, devoted to investigation and socially oriented, they saw other art manifestations as being excessively subjective, trascendental and mercantilist in which the exaltation of individualism lead to a superfluous and sterile form of art production. The exhibition was visited by the artists Richard Mortensen and Victor Vasarely, as well as the French gallerist Denise René, who later that year invited them to show the works at her space in Paris.
In 1957 Equipo 57 made another exhibition at La Sala Negra in Madrid where they presented large canvases, this time executed collectively, and the film Interactividad I, on view at C A S S T L. The film used an old fashion animation technique for the superposition of images that recreated the sensation of movement and formulated for the first time their theory of the plastic space that, succinctly, poised that form, colour, line and mass are not autonomous elements, but rather, part of a unitary continuum. They defended the autonomy of the pictorial surface—that means, the resulting space is not a representation of the distribution of the above cited elements, but rather, a space whose reality is purely plastic that only exists in the present. The results were not just abstract compositions, so to speak, but structures built on the notion of the dynamic continuity of space, in clear opposition to the concept of void. The film was composed of 450 gouaches and a small selection of them are also on view at C A S S T L. In hindsight, given the short-lived trajectory of Equipo 57, both the film and the gouaches have become fundamental in their overall body of work as they visually and conceptually encapsulate some the core postulates of the plastic space.
The Theory of Interactivity brought together their visual and scientific positions aimed at superseding the physical and emotional limits of art to fully grasp the essence of space. They considered art as a form of knowledge, not just a form of expression, and their ideas were conveyed using geometric abstraction. In a way, there is a parallelism between their understanding of space, as a unit, and how they perceived the role of artists in society, as agents of action. If there is an interrelation of factors in the plastic surface, then the different spheres that conform society should also be bound to each other and prone to be affected by their actions. For Equipo 57 the artwork is not an end in itself, but rather, a tool that has a direct projection in society thus contributing to its transformation.
Another important moment in their trajectory was a five months stay in Denmark during 1958. This “residency” ended with an exhibition at the Thorvaldsen Museum in Copenhagen and a series of conferences. During this time Equipo 57 deepened in their work methodology that, very succinctly, was based on the sequence discussion-investigation-creation that would lead to a concrete action within reality. If they were able to produce artworks while being physically separated, it was precisely because they followed certain rules and shared a clear approach to art making that above all was conceptual, objective, material-oriented, and based on rationalistic principles. They would, for instance, send back and forth letters and models as a method of discussion, and here at C A S S T L there are two preparatory sketches that directly respond to such way of working. Both sketches, as well as the large work on canvas also on display, belong to a phase in their development in which the pointy and angular angles characteristic of previous years (i.e the gouaches on view), were replaced by softer and curved lines that gently produced points of tension that accentuated dynamism and were required to create the continuity in the plastic space.
Equipo 57’s contribution to modernity was unparalleled in Spain in that specific period of time. During their stay in Denmark, they started producing sculpture as well as furniture design—similarly to the Bauhaus spirit, they shared the idea of exploring the possibilities of bringing together arts and crafts to find practical solutions that would improve the actual lives of people. Their embrace of Modernity and social commitment was also evident in the way they disseminated their work—besides the usual medium of the exhibition, they organized and sponsored a good number of conferences and explored the possibilities of displaying their work through magazines. Here at C A S S T L we have four examples of artworks commissioned by the magazine Acento Cultural (1960–1961) that were meant to be widely reproduced and accessible to all readers, thus contributing to their spirit to democratise their art production and reach all stratums of society.
The activity of Equipo 57 lasted until 1962, although their official date of dissolution did not take place until 1966 after the exhibition at Galerie Aktuel in Bern, Switzerland. Besides the aforementioned physical dispersion of its members (Córdoba, Madrid, Zurich, Paris), the end of Equipo 57 was accelerated when some of them became closer to other art movements or directly shifted their attention to other fields such as architecture. Another clear detonator was the imprisonment of Agustín Ibarrola in 1961 for his communist-related activities in Spain. On a formal level, the last years saw their work getting closer to Op and Kinetic Art tendencies and would embrace the use of optical effects, arabesque formulations and an apparent serialism. This later style found common ground with the aforementioned forms of optical art, as well as Concretism, that at that moment were receiving an increasing amount of international appreciation through exhibitions such as The Responsive Eye at MoMA or Konkrete Kunst organised by Max Bill in Zurich in which the work of Equipo 57 was included. Much later, in 1993, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid held a much needed retrospective exhibition that was of paramount importance for Equipo 57’s historiography and overall appreciation, both in Spain and beyond.
This project is made in collaboration with Galería Rafael Ortiz (Seville, Spain) and the generous support of the Spanish Embassy in Belgium.
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