Escuela de Altamira

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The Escuela de Altamira (School of Altamira) was not a painting school in the classical sense, but a loose association of painters, graphic artists, architects, ceramists, sculptors, writers, musicians, authors and art critics, which was revived ten years after the end of the Spanish Civil War the activities of the artistic avant-garde in Spain.

founding

The artists' association was founded in 1948 in Santillana del Mar in Cantabria by the German painter, architect and sculptor Mathias Goeritz , the Spanish sculptor Ángel Ferrant , the Spanish writer Ricardo Gullón and the editor and historian Pablo Beltrán de Heredia. Its aim was to unite people who until then had tried to develop the creative powers of Spanish culture in different parts of Spain (Madrid, Barcelona, ​​Tenerife). The aim was to renew the connections that existed in the 1920s and 30s within Spain and to the avant-garde art scene in Central Europe. The Escuela de Altamira wanted to open up the Spanish cultural scene to modern international tendencies as they existed before the civil war through discussions between artists and art critics at congresses and through public relations work. The choice of the Altamira cave above the city as a reference point resulted from the fact that Stone Age cave painting was viewed as a supranational symbol of art regardless of time.

The civil governor of the province of Santander (now the province of Cantabria ) was the patron of the first two events.

First International Week of Contemporary Art

The Primera Semana Internacional de Arte Contemporáneo (First International Week of Contemporary Art) took place in Santillana del Mar from 19 to 26 September 1949 . One of the initiators of the meeting, Mathias Goeritz , was unable to attend because his residence permit for Spain had not been extended. He subsequently worked in Mexico , but kept in close written contact with the other parties involved. At this first congress, artists, art critics and historians from different countries met. The participants in the first event in 1949 included A. the Swiss university professor and architect Alberto Sartoris , who chaired it, the English painter Anthony Stubbing, the Swedish sculptor Ted Dyrssen, the Spanish artists Ángel Ferrant, Josep Llorens i Artigas , Eudaldo Serra, Francisco (Pancho) Gutiérrez Cossío, the art historians Enrique Lafuente Ferrari and the historian Pablo Beltrán de Heredia, the art critics Ricardo Gullón, Sebastián Gasch, Rafael Santos Torroella, Luis Felipe Vivanco and Eduardo Westerdahl. In addition, Joan Miró , Barbara Hepworth , Ben Nicholson and Willi Baumeister were not present in person, who nevertheless felt they were members of the Escuela de Altamira .

An important topic of the conference was the interpretation of the wall paintings of the Paleolithic in relation to modern art. In terms of creativity, the treatment of lines and colors, the cave paintings were seen as the purest, original artistic expression that was to be taken up again in modern art. A lecture title was therefore: “Some remarks on the relationship between the images in the Altamira cave and modern art”. Other lecture topics included “Abstract art and its predecessors” and “The importance of feeling in contemporary art”.

In addition to theoretical considerations about the nature of art, concrete plans to promote avant-garde art were also developed. Through increased public relations, the views of the participants on culture in general, i.e. not only on the fine arts, but also on literature, music, film and theater, etc., should be disseminated in Spain and internationally. With this aim in mind, the members of the Escuela de Altamira wrote press articles for magazines at home and abroad. Some articles written by Vivanco also appeared in moderately Francoist newspapers and magazines. The presentations at the conference have been published as an anthology. The cover of this publication was designed by Joan Miró. The volume contains e.g. Colored illustrations by Ángel Ferrant, Mathias Goeritz, Alberto Sartoris, Llorens Artigas, Eudaldo Serra, Tony Stubbing, Francisco Cossio and Willi Baumeister. Some participants undertook to write new monographs on artists and problems of modern art in the course of the coming year. These works were printed as a series under the name "Monografias de la Escuela de Altamira" at the Hermanos Bedia printing house in Santander.

It started to publish its own magazine "Bisonte" ( Bison ), of which only one issue appeared. There were specific plans for a museum in Santillana del Mar, where works by contemporary avant-garde artists - not only from Spain - should be exhibited. In addition, it was planned to set up studios in connection with this museum in which artists from different countries could work and come into contact with one another. This aspect was later sought by participants in their own projects. The art critic Eduardo Westerdahl, for example, planned such a museum for Tenerife together with the architect Alberto Sartoris. This goal is pursued again today by the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Eduardo Westerdahl  in Puerto de la Cruz .

Second International Contemporary Art Week

The Segunda Semana Internacional de Arte Contemporáneo (Second International Week of Contemporary Art) took place from 21. – 28. September 1950 again in Santillana del Mar. The conference was chaired by Willi Baumeister . The lectures and discussions dealt primarily with the relationship between art and society, with the position of the artist and the question of the freedom of art. The discussions related not only to the fine arts, but also to other areas such as literature and music.

An exhibition with works by the Italian artist Carla Prina took place as part of the event.

In addition to a large number of the participants in the First International Week of Contemporary Art, A. Joan Teixidor, Guillermo de Torre, Willi Baumeister, Cicero Díaz y Ventura Doreste.

In the final declaration it was stated that surrealism had created a freedom of art that could not be limited, that there was no social art and that values ​​were falsified when art is used as propaganda. The conference report contains A. Contributions with the titles: Nuevo Arte Sagrado (New Religious Art), La Critica de Arte y sus Problemas , (Art criticism and its problems), La Genesis de la Creación Artistca (The emergence of artistic creation) and Perspectivas del Arte Contemporáneo (The Perspectives of Contemporary Art). Like the report of the First International Week of Contemporary Art, there was also a report of the Second International Week of Contemporary Art, with - for the time - elaborate illustrations by Carla Prina, Tony Stubbing, Mathias Goeritz, Ángel Ferrant, Willi Baumeister, Alberto Sartoris and Llorens Artigas y Serra.

Third International Week of Contemporary Art

On October 12, 1951, the Día de la Hispanidad (Spanish Day), the I. Bienal Hispanoamericana de Arte was opened by Francisco Franco . The exhibition, which was on view in Madrid from October 1951 to February 1952, showed contemporary art from Spain and countries that were culturally linked to Spain. There were different departments for architecture and town planning, sculpture, painting and drawing, and for printmaking. The exhibition was organized by the Instituto de Cultura Hispánica . The Instituto was not subordinate to the Ministerio de Educación Nacional (Ministry of Culture), but was affiliated to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as an independent institution.

Another meeting of members of the Escuela de Altamira took place in a temporal context, but independent of this exhibition, from November 1st to 7th, 1951 in Madrid. Whether this event can be described as the Third International Week of Contemporary Art is controversial, as the structure of the participants differs greatly from the previous meetings. The meeting did not take place in Santillana del Mar and no separate publication of the lectures and discussions was published. Alberto Sartoris, who teaches at the Institut d'architecture Athenaeum in Lausanne , published a report on the meeting in December 1951 in a double edition of the Italian magazine Numero .

Among many other personalities, chaired by Sartoris, the civil governor of the province of Santander Joaquín Reguera Sevilla, the writer Ricardo Gullón, the art critic Eduardo Westerdahl, the ceramist Josep Llorens i Artigas, the writers Leopoldo Panero Torbado, Luis Rosales Camach and Rafael Santos i Torroella, the sculptors Ángel Ferrant Vázquez and Carlos Ferreira de la Torre, the architects Luis Felipe Vivanco and José Luis Durán de Cottes, the painters Tony Stubbing, Francisco Gutiérrez Cossío, Benjamin Palencia, Rafael Zabaleta Fuentes, Enrique Planasdurá and Carlos Pascual de Lara attend the meetings.

effect

The Altamira School did not work primarily through the conferences. It was there that the positions were clarified and manifestos were drawn up. Above all, however, these meetings served to coordinate activities with which the members wanted to defend their common cause in public. Work tasks were agreed for the individual members, who then carried them out from their respective place of residence.

While the participants in the first two meetings were still fighting against the state's cultural policy, the goals of the Altamira School were in the course of time partially undermined by a liberalization of the Francoist cultural policy, especially in relation to abstract painting. This liberalization in cultural policy at the end of the 1940s and 1950s coincided with changes in economic and foreign policy. The opening of the state's cultural policy meant that modern tendencies, both in the field of fine arts and in the field of literature, were tolerated, if not encouraged. The participants in the meetings of the School of Altamira tried again on the local level for the connection of Spanish modern art to the international level and the spread of avant-garde currents in society.

Exhibitions on the theme of Escuela de Altamira

Between 1981 and 2010 various exhibitions were held in Santillana del Mar, dedicated to the Escuela de Altamira and the participating artists. The exhibition catalogs each contain a comprehensive description of the impact of the association and biographical notes on the members.

In July and August 1981 an exhibition was shown in the Torre de Don Borja in Santillana del Mar.

Another exhibition took place in August and September 1998 in the Casas del Águila y La Parra in Santillana del Mar.

The exhibition at the Museo Nacional y Centro de Investigación de Altamira in Santillana lasted from December 23, 2010 to December 31, 2011.

literature

  • Ricardo Gullón, Eduardo Westerdahl, Alberto Sartoris, et al .: Textos y conferencias de la 1ª Semana de Arte de Santillana del Mar . 1st edition. Taller de Artes graficas de los Hermanos Bedia, Santander 1950, p. 256 (The book cover was designed by Joan Miró. The book contains illustrations by Ángel Ferrant, Mathias Goeritz, Alberto Sartoris, Llorens Artigas, Eudaldo Serra, Tony Stubbing, Francisco Cossio and Willi Baumeister).
  • Alberto Sartoris, Luis Felipe Vivanco, Rafael Santos i Torroella et al .: Segunda semana de arte en Santillana del Mar: Del 20 al 26 de septiembre, 1950 . Taller de Artes graficas de los Hermanos Bedia, Santander 1951, p. 240 .
  • Paloma Esteban Leal, Fundación Santillana: Exposición conmemorativa de la Escuela de Altamira . Dirección General de Bellas Artes, Madrid 1981.
  • José Miguel Cabañas Bravo: La primera bienal hispanoamericana de arte . Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid 2002, ISBN 84-8466-014-1 ( ucm.es [PDF]).
  • Gabriel Ureña: Las Vanguardías Artísticas en la Posguerra Española . Istmo, 1995, ISBN 84-7090-120-6 , pp. 576 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Jorge Luis Marzo: Arte Moderno y Franquismo. (PDF; 846 kB) Los Origenes Conservadoras de la Vanguardia y la Politica Artistica en España. 2006, Retrieved May 19, 2012 (Spanish). P. 17 footnote 16
  2. ↑ Valeriano Bozal: Pintura y Escultura Españolas del Siglo XX (1939-1990) . 3. Edition. Espasa Calpe SA, Madrid 1996, ISBN 84-239-5480-3 , p. 221 f .
  3. ↑ Ricardo Gullón: Primera reunión de la "Escuela de Altamira". Fundación Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, accessed April 16, 2012 (Spanish).
  4. ↑ Julián Díaz Sanchez, Ángel Llorente Hernández: La crítica de arte en España (1939–1976) . Istmo, Madrid 2004, ISBN 84-7090-440-X , p. 254-264 (Spanish).
  5. ↑ Ricardo Gullón: Primera reunión de la "Escuela de Altamira". Fundación Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, accessed April 16, 2012 (Spanish).
  6. ^ "Algunas ideas sobre Altamira y el arte moderno" Lecture by Ricardo Gullón Fernández
  7. ^ "El arte no figurativo actual y sus antecedentes" Lecture by Sebastián Gasch i Carreras
  8. ↑ "Sentido trascendental del arte contemporáneo" Lecture by Eduardo Westerdahl
  9. ↑ Julián Díaz Sanchez, Ángel Llorente Hernández: La crítica de arte en España (1939–1976) . Istmo, Madrid 2004, ISBN 84-7090-440-X , p. 254 ff . (Spanish).
  10. ↑ Ricardo Gullón, Eduardo Westerdahl, Alberto Sartoris, et al .: Textos y conferencias de la 1ª Semana de Arte de Santillana del Mar . 1st edition. Taller de Artes graficas de los Hermanos Bedia, Santander 1950, p. 256 .
  11. ^ Sebastián Gasch: José Llorens Artigas . Monografías de La Escuela de Altamira, Santander 1951, p. 33 + 20 . / Ricardo Gullón: Ángel Ferrant . Monografías de la Escuela de Altamira, Santander 1951. / Eugenio D'Ors: No hay tal prehistoria . Monografías De La Escuela De Altamira, Santander 1950, p. 59 . / Luis Felipe Vivanco: Alberto Sartoris . Monografía de la Escuela de Altamira, Santander 1951, p. 102 . / Ángel Ferrant: La esencia humana de las formas . Publicaciones de la Escuela de Altamira, Santander 1952, p. 57 +1 .
  12. ↑ Ángel Ferrant, Sebastián Gasch, Alberto Sartorius, Eduardo Westerdal, Tony Stubbing, Luis Felipe Vivanco et al .: Bisonte: Anthología de la Escuela de Altamira . Santander 1949, p. 11 .
  13. ^ Naima Pérez: Parque San Francisco. La Opinion, November 3, 2011, accessed April 6, 2012 (Spanish).
  14. ↑ Alberto Sartoris, Luis Felipe Vivanco, Rafael Santos i Torroella et al .: Segunda semana de arte en Santillana del Mar: Del 20 al 26 de septiembre, 1950 . Taller de Artes graficas de los Hermanos Bedia, Santander 1951, p. 240 .
  15. ↑ In the literature generally only the two congresses in Santillana del Mar are mentioned
  16. ↑ José Miguel Cabañas Bravo: La primera bienal hispanoamericana de arte . Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid 2002, ISBN 84-8466-014-1 .
  17. ^ Gabriel Ureña: Las Vanguardías Artísticas en la Posguerra Española . Istmo, 1995, ISBN 84-7090-120-6 , pp. 576 .
  18. ↑ Paloma Esteban Leal, Fundación Santillana: Exposición conmemorativa de la Escuela de Altamira . Dirección General de Bellas Artes, Madrid 1981.
  19. ↑ Fernando Francés, Fernando Huici: La Escuela de Altamira . Gobierno de Cantabria Consejería de Cultura y Deporte, Santander 1998, p. 222 (Exposición celebrada en Casas del Águila y La Parra, Santillana del Mar, de agosto a septiembre de 1998).
  20. ^ Exhibition: The School of Altamira (1948–1950) and the Sistine Chapel of New Art. (No longer available online.) Instituto de Turismo de España, formerly the original ; Retrieved May 19, 2012 (Spanish).  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.spain.info