AN AMERICAN OUTLOOK 1936-1996

It is well known that Esteban Vicente led a large part of his life and artistic career in the United States. His association with the American expressionist movement (particularly with the New York School), his friendship and close collaboration with some of its members including de Kooning, Rothko and Newman, as well as his teaching work at Black Mountain College, New York University, Princeton and Columbia Universities demonstrate this. As a result, Esteban Vicente may be considered, without a doubt, a first-hand witness and protagonist of the North American artistic and social reality.

This exhibition, which comprises a wide range of American photography, from the middle of the 1930s almost to the end of the twentieth century, brings together some thirty-one works by twenty-one important photographers, all of which come from the IVAM.

Alongside this is a selection of paintings, drawings and sculptures by Esteban Vicente from the Museum’s permanent collection. The aim is to establish both a visual and a conceptual dialogue between the language of photography and the work of the Segovian painter within certain cultural, social and of course historical parameters, the aim being to shed a new light and create new channels for understanding and enrichment between the two creative spheres. It is a pictorial outlook which moves away from reality in order to immerse itself in the abstract whilst interrelated with a photographic outlook which is much closer to the real world in which it transpires. In short, two voices and, at the same time, one American outlook.

The exhibition begins with two works dated 1936 (the year in which Esteban Vicente arrived in the United States), taken by Walker Evans and Berenice Abbot, which act as an effective contextualizing framework. This is followed by a series of photographs from the 1940s which show, by means of the versatile binary code of black and white, different aspects of North American life seen through the lenses of Weegee, Lisette Model, Robert Frank and Aaron Siskind. The following two decades are represented by the outlooks of Harry Callahan, Irving Penn, Ralph Steiner, George S. Zimbel, Diane Arbus, Bruce Davison and Robert Frank. The 1970s include works by Lee Friedlander and, once again, Robert Frank (the photographer with the largest number of works in this exhibition).

Finally, the ultimate years of the last century are represented by Richard Avedon, Allan MacCollum, Cindy Sherman, William Klein, Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Mapplethorpe and Nan Goldin. This last section depicts a variety of trends in which documental photography coexists with the autobiographical, esthetic and interpretive characteristics of post-modern photography.