Art Madrid'23 – I segni nel tempo, spanish drawings from Uffizi Collection in Madrid

 

The Louvre Museum, the Hispanic Society of New York, the Met Museum NY, the British Museum in London, all them have the most important collections of Spanish drawing in the world... Now we discover these days in Madrid the collection belonging to the Gallery the Uffizi in Florence, a collection in which several researchers have deepened in recent years to discover many unknown authorship.

 

 

 

 

 

"I Segni nel tempo" is the exhibition organized by the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, the MAPFRE Foundation and Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe of the Galleries degli Uffizi, which includes more than 100 drawings of the Florentine collection, from the most representative Spanish artists of the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries and the most popular artists of the Spanish Golden Age: Alonso Berruguete, Gaspar Becerra, Luis de Vargas, José de Ribera, Alonso Cano, Francisco de Herrera the Younger, Antonio del Castillo, Vicente Carducho, Juan Carreño, Francisco Rizi, Claudio Coello and Miguel Jacinto Meléndez.

 

 

 

 

The appeal of this collection lies in the presence of unique examples to study the creative process of Spanish artists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, designs for the study of major works of Spanish cultural heritage. It is an opportunity to meet many drawings completely unknown so far and others that have never been exhibited in Spain.

 


 

 

The origin of the collection dates back to 1745, the approximate date on which the Florentine merchant Giovanni Filippo Michelozzi was in Madrid. The Spanish drawing always was attractive to the taste of the Italian collectors and a first set of drawings was bought by the Royal Gallery of Florence in 1779 (thanks to the procurement policy sponsored by the Grand Duke of Tuscany Pietro Leopoldo of Habsburg Lorena and director the Royal Uffizi Gallery, Giuseppe Pelli Bencivenni). The rest was acquired later by sculptor Emilio Santarelli (1801-1886) and donated in 1866 to the Florentine institution with an extraordinary legacy of 12,704 designs.

 

 


 

 

 

An exhaustive research work, in which they have invested more than two years, has revealed more than seventy new authorships who were badly allocated between the bottom of Italian drawings, Flemish and German for what has revised more than 40,000 drawings and the entire photographic archive of the institution. The catalog that accompanies the exhibition, with a high scientific and graphic value, is a work of fundamental reference for the study of Spanish drawing in general and knowledge of the collection of Spanish drawings from the Uffizi in particular, a fundamental part of Spanish heritage beyond our borders.

In the year 2020 in the heart of Barcelona a wandering gallery was born, the same one that in February 2021 would debut at Art Madrid with an exhibition proposal focused on contemporary portraits; with this subject matter it would manage to create a powerful dialogue between artwork and audience and make the seal Inéditad remain in the history of the event that contained it.

Jean Carlos Puerto. Protección. Oil and copper leaf on wood. 60 x 48. 2021. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Since that first time and until today, the wandering gallery has managed to build projects on otherness, has repositioned in the spotlight the discourses on the LGTBIQ+ collective, has consolidated a group of artists who share its principles of resilience and empathy and the best thing is that it continues to bet from the professionalism and commitment to give voice to the difference.

Claudio Petit-Laurent.. El Joven de la Perla. Oil on wood. 30 x 30 cm. 2023. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Inéditad Gallery, thanks to its founder Luis López, its collaborators and the infinite possibilities manifested in the works of the artists it represents, is a gallery that has demonstrated its capacity and courage to stimulate the sensibility of the public through art and seduce a generation that moves between the glass window and the analogical story. Inéditad is a nomadic gallery that has gathered around it a community of artists and has moved the context with exhibition projects that think about LGTBIQ+ art without prejudices.

Pepa Salas Vilar. Las marcas del arcoiris. Oil on canvas. 40 x 50 cm. 2022. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Pride and Prejudice was inaugurated. An exhibition that brings together the works of sixteen artists: Abel Carrillo, Alex Domènech, Carlos Enfedaque, Silvia Flechoso, Jamalajama, Daniel Jaén, Claudio Petit-Laurent, Jean Carlos Puerto, Fernando Romero, Pablo Rodríguez, Pepa Salas Vilar, Jack Smith, Pablo Sola, Bran Sólo, Elia Tomás and Utürüo. Painting, illustration, photography and digital art are the manifestations that bring into dialogue around fifty neatly threaded pieces, in a discursive line that discusses such a latent phenomenon as discrimination. To achieve this, the artists invited to the exhibition question themselves whether: Does discrimination exist within the LGTBIQ+ collective?

Pride and Prejudice Official Poster. Image courtesy of the gallery.

With approaches on and from the body, the proposal invites to celebrate diversity, proposes to question and self-question the prejudices and attitudes of society against the collective. Pride and Prejudice is a space for dialogue about the constructs imposed on us by society. It is also an oasis in which to deconstruct with tolerance and respect the subjectivities that sometimes prevent us from approaching the production of the participating artists, simply because "the beautiful" does not fit in an androgynous body. The subjugation of stereotypes are pressed with determination to find the beauty of diversity in other palpable facets of reality.

Pablo Sola. All men are dogs. Photography. 2014. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Throughout these three years Inéditad has stimulated the vindictive projection towards bad practices, has questioned estates around the LGTBIQ+ body and the most admirable thing, is that these capacities have resurfaced around the dialogue and the visual narrative of the stories that are told from the visual: Artworks that are people, art that is, per se, humanity. Overcome impositions and accept what is different in order to continue fighting against homophobia, biphobia, lesbophobia or transphobia and defend the equal rights that all the acronyms of the collective deserve in our community.

That's Pride and Prejudice: One creature, the happiest in the world. And maybe other projects and other people have said it - or felt it - before, but none so fairly.

Silvia Flechoso. Hola, soy maricón. Oil on canvas. 73 x 54 cm. 2023. Image courtesy of the gallery.

From June 8th until June 22nd you can visit Pride and Prejudice. Carrer de Palau núm. 4. Canal Gallery space. Barcelona.