A FOREST IN WORKS.

Avant-garde Spanish wood sculpture.

May 31  – September 17, 2000

The main idea of the exhibition is to show how the avant-garde language has given expression with efficiency and severity to a material considered par excellence pre-modern, as related to popular crafts or with the medieval, renaissance and baroque sculpture tradition. In the Spanish case, modern culture of wood connects in a natural way with the religious carving schools, that reached its zenith in Castilla in the seventeenth century. By means of the itinerary of the exhibition it was made clear that although there have been essential works for the modern sculpture made in iron, as the cubist, abstract or surrealist ones, wood has been capable of assimilate effectively these languages and, furthermore, offer several possibilities specially suitable for the constructivist, expressionist or kinetic works, as well as for the found object poetics and for povera ones.

In this sense it is a singular exhibition in which the Museum so far raise the whole question being an important contribution to the modern historiography.

This exhibition was previously presented at the space Sala de las Alajas in Madrid (28th March – 14th May 2000)

Sponsored by Caja Madrid.