Design : España

The ambition of this exhibition is to bring the French audience to discover the contributions of the Spanish inventiveness regarding furniture design, industrial design and graphic design,  with a retrospective look on a lesser known creation, that of the XXth century and around symbolic objects of the Spanish popular culture.
The current design achievements are presented with personalities who meet an international projection today.  It is thus the occasion to describe the total peculiarity of our Iberian neighbor. 

After 40 years of dictatorship, Spain was an underestimated and closed country, before exploding on the international level in the 80s in an effervescent Movida, followed by Olympic Games ( 1992 ) which prepared its entry to the European Community.

During  a century, the creativity of the country had nevertheless always asserted itself: with the Art nouveau and the Catananist movements of the new century in Barcelona, then in a first attempt to be a part of the international modernity (1927, Universal Exhibition in Barcelona), attempt interrupted at the end of the Second Republic;  then in an industrial peculiarity made more original by the isolation of the years of dictatorship. And finally, with the Transition, in the explosion of the 80s and 90s coexisted a bias of modernity and a kind of a tenderness for the vernacular folklore, the very original coexistence notified to the world by Pedro Almodóvar's movies.

Besides, since the beginning of the XXth century, three economic leaders, Catalonia, Basque Country and Madrid have been maintaining a large number of industrial initiatives in which the design never was forgotten. After Oscar Tusquets and Javier Mariscal in the previous decades, Patricia Urquiola, Jaime Hayon, Marti Guixé or the young Nacho Carbonell embody the new generation. They are not any more considered as the simple emblems of a surprising modernity but rather as the authors of a new international design, been born in Spain.
The exhibition  will be on show at the Gallery of the Fine arts of Bordeaux, during summer 2013

AROUND THE EXHIBITION

Conférence Javier Mariscal
12 juin 2013, 18h30
À Arc-En-Rêve Centre d’architecture,
7 rue Ferrère à Bordeaux

Thank you :

L’ICEX, España, Exportación e Inversiones
Institut Cervantes
Samsung
Federico Paternina Rioja
Bodegas Senõrio de Nava
Consejo Regulador del Cava
Amis du musée des Arts décoratifs et du Design
Chapon Fin
Air France
Château de Launay
Château Nairac
Grand Hôtel de Bordeaux & Spa