Museo Carmen Thyssen

Some thirty works by more than twenty artists make up this diverse and colourful mosaic of the figurative painting that became a symbol of the new modernity ushered in by Spain’s transition to democracy in the 1980s.

For the main players in this productive period for Spanish contemporary art, it was a decade that vindicated painting: its validity as a means of reinvigorating artistic exploration and its ability to produce original creations that reflected a time of newfound freedoms. A time for taking real pleasure in painting.

Liberated and multicoloured, hedonistic and apolitical in its themes, steeped in expressiveness and captured on large canvases, a new figurative art flourished in the hands of young artists. Some (such as Gordillo, Arroyo and the Schizos of the Madrid figurative movement: Franco, Alcolea, Pérez Villalta, Cobo, Quejido, Molero) had been active since the 1960s and the 1970s; others (García Sevilla, Barceló, Patiño, Lamas, Gadea, Ugalde) joined the pluralistic scene brimming with creativity in the 1980s.

Despite their diverse backgrounds (many were from Andalusia), they all shared the same environment – with Madrid and its vibrant cultural scene, the Movida, as the geographical epicentre – and a generational aim to create a new kind of painting, each from their own approach, in a period of optimism and enthusiasm that was a far cry from the preceding dictatorship.

Surveying the multifarious scene of the time, where figurative art coexisted alongside an abstract art that had also moved on from the Art Informel of the 1950s and 1960s and prevailed over conceptual art, this exhibition examines the pre-eminence of a rebellious and provocative type of painting without rules which championed the playful and frivolous side and the sheer pleasure of painting and looking. It was a liberated painting that artists, critics, galleries and institutions presented as a reflection of the collective liberation of 1980s Spain.

Guillermo Pérez Villalta. Escena. Personajes a la salida de un concierto de rock, 1979
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid
© Guillermo Pérez Villalta, VEGAP, Málaga, 2025

Carlos Alcolea. Los borrachos, 1978-1979
Colección Museo Helga de Alvear, Cáceres
© Carlos Alcolea, VEGAP, Málaga, 2025

Miquel Barceló. Mapa de carne, 1982
Colección de Arte Contemporáneo Fundación “la Caixa”
© Miquel Barceló, VEGAP, Málaga, 2025

Patricia Gadea. Viaje al Monte Negro, 1984
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid
© Patricia Gadea, VEGAP, Málaga, 2025

In this selection of more than fifty images from the José Luis Soler Vila Collection, several decades of documentary photos, from 1930 to 1980, form a mosaic of faces and people who were spotted and caught on film in streets and everyday spaces of the United States by eleven brilliant American photographers. Leading names in their discipline, they exemplify a straightforward approach to reality which they all shared and promoted, each with their own aims and sensibilities, fascinated by capturing life with their cameras in order to simply show it as it is.

The exhibition begins with pieces by the pioneers, such as Walker Evans, Robert Frank and Louis Faurer, and ends with the colour pictures of Harry Callahan, Anthony Hernandez and Tod Papageorge from the 1960s and later.  This assortment of snapshots of american people and their everyday lives highlights the importance of the genre and enables us to trace its development, as well as to ‘put a face’ to the diverse and complex social realities of the United States over six decades.

By capturing images of real life, documentary photography showed itself to be a hybrid genre receptive to historical testimony, portraiture, the stimulus of the street, psychological and sociological investigation, social criticism, irony, storytelling… The coexistence and combination of different trends, ranging from photojournalism to straight, humanist and street photography, enriched its documentary essence and enabled photographers to put their personal stamp on their work.

Ultimately, taking reality as their basis, reproducing it accurately and even infusing it with an enigmatic quality was the shared aspiration of all these approaches. So was looking at the ordinary, that which usually goes unnoticed, and making photography a sample of life.

Beautiful People
Tod Papageorge at Studio 54
José Luis Soler Vila Collection
Espacio ArteSonado

In 1978 Tod Papageorge (Portsmouth, New Hampshire, 1940) made it through the famous velvet rope line at the entrance to the Studio 54 nightclub – a much-coveted achievement during the club's short three-year existence – which marked a kind of fabulous boundary between the real New York and the wild and select universe that unfolded inside.

Inspired by Brassaï's images of 1930s Paris, which he had seen in an exhibition at the MoMA, and like him equipped with a medium-format camera, Papageorge watched a motley assortment of celebrities, extravagant characters and anonymous faces parade in front of his lens at the legendary discotheque between 1978 and 1980 – the privileged few who were allowed inside that haven of freedom and pleasure.

From its opening at 254 West 54th Street in Manhattan on 26 April 1977 until its closure in February 1980, Studio 54 attracted, strictly by invitation, the ‘beautiful people’ who lived in or were passing through the city, famous or unknown names who craved celebrity, who wanted to see and be seen. Prominent people from the worlds of film, music, the arts, fashion and politics and partygoers of all stripes flocked to the hottest venue of the moment and immersed themselves in its unique atmosphere of euphoria, fun and debauchery.

Navigating the carefully decorated spaces designed for enjoyment (the dance floor, the bar, the VIP areas and the terrace), Papageorge immortalised the intensely earthly reality of that short-lived paradise of New York nightlife in photos of which a small sample is displayed here. What we see in them is Studio 54 and its mythical aura as a significant cultural and artistic phenomenon: a collection of black and white images that ‘were always meant to speak for themselves’.