Antonio Lafuente

Antonio Lafuente - Aphrodite in front of the sea

Artist Biography:

 

With the decadence and death of the dictator and his forty-year military regime, a dreadful abyss of silence, ignorance and isolation opened up at the feet of the Spanish people. Although the arts, literature, theater and philosophy had kept a small and heroic candle permanently lit in the basements of the system, those who in those fearful and exciting moments were or were beginning to be young people with artistic concerns found themselves facing an immense vacuum of references, both of the cruelly interrupted heritage of native creation, and of what the rest of the world was shining, only discernible through the small loopholes of censorship. Despite this, the enthusiasm, the desire for experimentation, provocation and rupture, as well as the influence of new magazines such as Nueva Lente, which were in turn a platform of expression for new creators, made possible a renaissance of photography, design and illustration during the transition to democracy. Antonio Lafuente, Miguel Ángel Mendo and Oscar Mariné were part of that creative renaissance that placed the Spanish capital on the most avant-garde map of those distant days of the 1970s and early 1980s. This exhibition shows some original photomontages by Antonio Lafuente and Miguel Ángel Mendo, hand-colored with watercolor, oil and gouache, which gave rise to a new concept of photographic illustration somewhere between Surrealism and Pop Art. Both formed part of the now defunct Equipo Yeti. From Oscar Mariné, creator of one of the references of the emerging culture of the 80s, the magazine Madrid me mata, we have selected four significant works with which he contributed to illuminate those years of profound change in our society. In his own words, "what is known as the Movida madrileña was nothing more and nothing less than a time when we supported each other and worked almost collectively. We were a generation of solidarity".