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POST-CONCEPTUAL FIGURATION

 

The post-conceptual Figuration phenomenon encompasses a number of artists working for the renewal of the Spanish figurative painting from individual points of view. This trend emerged in the early 1970s has been presented in various exhibitions program, first under the name of New Madrileña Figuration and later as neo-metaphysics or Figurations.

 

Under the name of post-conceptual Figuration different artists developing work close to these aesthetic and conceptual keys are also included.

 

The term Figuration refers to a hybrid and heterodox pictorial image, defined as post-abstract and anti-realist.

 

The term post-conceptual shows the influence of the emergence in the early 1960s of the Conceptual art practiced in the recovery of the concept in the artwork.

 

Doctoral Thesis of the post-conceptual Figuration. Spanish Painting: from the New Madrileña Figuration to neo-metaphysics (1970-2010), defended by Paco de la Torre in 2012, offers a reading of continuity between these pictorial currents that are strong and plausible in the Spanish contemporary artistic phenomenon, close to postmodern thought.

 

The story of these forty years of history in its context —since its inception in the late 1960’s in Spain, to its activity in the early twenty-first century — includes a systematic study of all the exhibitions program developed: 1980 (1979), Madrid D. F. (1980), Other figures (1981), The return of the prodigal son (1991-1992), Muelle de Levante (1994), Visions without center (1998-1999), Song of the figures (1999), Figuraciones (1999-2003 ) and The schizos of Madrid (2009).

 

From the study of the authors and their works are formulated key poetic aesthetic, these artists give a family resemblance that identifies them to other positions artistic contemporaries. Among those keys include its firm commitment to tackle pictorial image and the regeneration of traditional figurative painting, especially at a time coincident with the emergence and spread of Conceptual Art.

 

Despite maintaining an individualistic and independent, post-conceptual artists share Figuration each other interests such as recuperating the narrative and the poetic character of the painting, redefining figuration, the positioning of resistance to or advocacy media image of iconic latent semantics.

 

Our research includes a listing of the authors linked to this phenomenon, which gathers a variety of formal solutions and career of historical impact and / or critical diverse, they all developed in very different contexts. This listing is accompanied by a detailed chronology of exhibition activities undertaken. Doctoral Thesis also has an extensive “Appendix documentary” which includes the contribution of original and unpublished sources consist of a series of texts by the artists themselves, as well as interviews with the protagonists.

 

Consult Thesis