The Mariano Yera collection is one of the most important collections of Spanish painting of the last century, comparable only to those of the great museums. The level of the works collected is the result of 23 years of work in the field with the firm intention of supporting painting in its most progressive postulates.

This exhibition is not presented as a chronological succession but as a superimposition of maps on which each painting is placed. The works do not follow one another by date, but are confronted with their referents or successors so that the viewer can understand how the genealogical links of Spanish art are woven beyond conventional historiographical lines. In this way it is possible to understand how some artists prove to be decisive over time, even if they were not
necessarily so at the historical moment to which they belonged.

The collection has internal dynamics beyond temporal succession. One work does not directly succeed another, not even when we are talking about two pieces by the same artist, but sometimes one artist does continue the line taken by a previous one. It is not difficult to find, within this genealogical idea, a raison d'être for certain forms that go from Miquel Barceló or Juan Uslé to Rubén Guerrero, for example, or it is not difficult to trace a diagonal that goes from Palazuelo to Equipo 57 and ends in FOD, for the moment. This idea is as old as the postulates of the first moments of development of Kunstwissenschaft. We are talking about the need to understand, from the perspective of art history, the development of artistic forms from a knowledge of the social and cultural conditions of the artist. There is no creation without context and any strictly formalistic approach to a work of art is deficient.

Exhibition curated by Carolina Parra and Nacho Ruiz.

About the collection

The collection was started by Mariano Yera in 1999. In 2013 Natalia Yera accepted to direct the destinies of this family treasure. Since then its curators have been Rosina Gómez-Baeza and Lucía Ybarra. At present the collection has one hundred and ninety-two works by ninety-four artists, growing and taking on new challenges with the incorporation of works by Spanish artists representative of the poetics - always in dialogue - between figuration and abstraction, following the line drawn from its beginnings. In addition, it has a professional team that rigorously supports the restoration work carried out by Ana Iruretagoyena, as well as the registration and documentation by Laura Ramírez Palacio.