In the early eighties, after the Spanish Transition and in the final stretch of the Cold War, the opening to the public of the Círculo de Bellas Artes was planned in the center of Madrid, a cultural space that had closed its doors during the Civil War and, during the Franco dictatorship, had practically become a betting casino. To take on the task of the new cycle, a group of artists from different disciplines was called to form the board of directors: the sculptor Martín Chirino as president, accompanied by some like Lucio Muñoz, Rafael Canogar, Juan Genovés, Basilio Martín Patino, Tomás Marco, and Pedro García Ramos. Also, for the first time, women were integrated, among them, Marisa González, Josefina Molina, Amalia Avia, and Carmen Hermosilla. The new board took office on May 7, 1983, guided by Chirino’s directives to turn the Círculo into a “center for the protection of the Fine Arts and a public utility entity, promoting the arts in general and giving it the necessary modernity to operate the change.”
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One hundred years after the inauguration of the Alcalá 42 building, the Picasso Room presents Eclosión, the exhibition that covers the decades following the opening of the Círculo with archival material, videos, paintings, photographs, and audios totaling 480 pieces. Olivia María Rubio, the curator, spent about a year reviewing more than 9,000 elements that narrate the history in a show open to the public until May 10.
For Rubio, this exhibition is not about art, but about history. It has been a work of recovering the history of the Círculo and those who have made the project possible. For example, the women: “I have been very mindful that there is representation of women in everything, because there was, I am not making it up.” Also, the appreciation of the coordinating team, who often work behind the scenes. “I believe this institution was the first school of cultural managers in Spain.”
The resurrection of the Círculo was not easy. Besides decades of censorship and dictatorship, and a complicated development of national culture, there were debts to settle and a building to refurbish. “This was falling apart,” Rubio says at the start of the tour. But there was plenty of intention. The doors opened with the Fiesta del Resurgimiento on May 31, 1983, where around 4,000 people attended according to the press of the time. “It became a symbol of the cultural transformation that took place in our country with the arrival of democracy,” explains the curator.
A short walk, the walls of the Picasso fill with black and white photographs — almost all taken by Enrique Castellano, the Círculo’s photographer at the time — showing all the cultural personalities of the era. In one of them, Rafael Alberti appears at the Erotic Poetry Recital accompanied by Ana Rossetti, in an image accompanied by the sound of the poem through headphones. Others show Javier Vallhonrat, Julio Le Parc, Pilar Miró, Gabriel García Márquez, Pilar González España… Rubio sums it up: “They really managed over two decades to have all the great intellectuals, artists, essayists, theater directors, film directors pass through here… It was impressive.” Everyone wanted to be there, probably understanding the political and social importance of doing so after a long night in Spain.
In 1984, the first video festival in Spain was held and, in 1985, the first photography festival Foco. A red and black poster with an eighties aesthetic announced the first Workshop of Contemporary Art, “a huge success from the start,” says Rubio, where masters from different areas taught courses in close relation with their students. In that version, for example, the names were Alfonso Fraile, Juan Hernández Pijuán, Antonio Saura, Dario Villalba, Josep Guinovart, Eduardo Arroyo, and Pablo Palazuelo. Those were years of madness, openness, irreverence, and the Círculo managed to incorporate it by becoming a center of modernity and avant-garde through which all the names of architecture, cinema, dance, reading and literature, theater, design, music passed… All disciplines met in Minerva’s house. “It was that moment when everyone was enthusiastic, willing to do anything, to break molds, to break those structures that had kept them absolutely armored,” Rubio recalls.
Regarding these structures, 22 artists painted an exquisite corpse 20 meters long by one meter high, during the Culture and Dissidence, the struggle for freedoms during the dictatorship sessions, held from July 17 to 23, 1997. It now runs along an entire wall, inviting viewers to identify the painters. “There are some you can distinguish, others are difficult,” Rubio says while observing the piece. In the background, a handful of less legible signatures give them away. Some of them are Alfredo Alcaín, Marta Cárdenas, Óscar Estruga, Abraham Lacalle, Patricia Gadea, Miguel Condé, and Mercedes Gómez-Pablos.
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In 1993, while going through a major economic crisis and the Círculo again facing financial problems, they decided to make an open call that received more than 400 projects. Alcalá 42 was taken over for six weeks by artists from all branches in the exhibition Culture Crisis Culture. This is not a crisis. “Every corner was full of performances, photography exhibitions, art, conferences, music, everything.” That was where Marisa González exhibited Fax Station – Fax Station for the first time. Even, a video projected on a television shows a young Almodóvar at a discussion table of the event.
One of the tasks the Círculo set for its reinvention was to recover what was cut short by the Civil War and the Franco dictatorship, such as the work of Federico García Lorca or the masked dances of the carnival. The poster for the 1936 dance was already designed but, amid political tension, it could not be held. In 1984 they recovered it, identical, in what can be read as an act of reparation with the past.
A space for thought
A projector shows the video of the cycle The Body. Scenarios for Freedom, organized by Antonio Bernabeu amid the HIV/AIDS crisis. It featured Jean Baudrillard, Julian Barnes, Alain Finkielkraut, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Susan Sontag, Gianni Vattimo, and Pedro Laín Entralgo. “All of them talking about the body from different perspectives,” the curator says. “For me, it is one of the great milestones, because convening in Spain, in 1987 and at the Círculo, all these figures to talk about such an important topic at that moment shows that openness was not only in art matters but also in thought.”
The end of the tour is in a dark room with a few chairs and a video about the program that Arte channel made at the Círculo de Bellas Artes in 1993, days before the elections where the Socialist Party won with Felipe González after facing José María Aznar. The images show some young French people talking about politics on the building’s rooftop: “You hear them talk and it’s as if we were talking right now. The housing problem, the corruption problem, that we don’t want politicians,” reflects the curator, who discovered this record at the last minute and could not leave it out of the exhibition. “It reflects that moment very well. On one hand, the importance of the Círculo abroad as a reference place in Spain and, on the other, the political situation at the time.”
Rubio emphasizes the importance of looking back and valuing what has been done: “It is good to remember where we came from, where we have arrived, and where we can return… It is important to remember that there is always an attempt, by many people, to resist regression and to keep moving forward.”
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