CA2M Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo

CA2M CENTRO DE ARTE DOS DE MAYO COLLECTION

From the outset, the aim of the CA2M collection has been to promote contemporary  Spanish artists and thus facilitate the ongoing creation or recreation of the artistic and cultural heritage.

The collection was tied to CA2M on the latter's creation in 2008, having gradually been assembled by the Ministry for Culture of the Regional Government of Madrid. It also includes items inherited from the Provincial Delegation of Culture of the former Provincial Council of Madrid. Initially, the acquisitions policy focused on painting and sculpture by authors born at the end of the 1940s and during the 1950s, most of whom belonged to the two most characteristic artistic trends of the 1970s generation:  new figuration, represented among others by Juan Navarro Baldeweg, and new abstraction, represented for example by Jordi Teixidor and Santiago Serrano. In the 1980s the first installations entered the collection, courtesy of Leopoldo Emperador and Pello Irazu, following their display at the Una obra para un espacio [A Work for a Space] exhibition that inaugurated the gallery in the former warehouse of the Canal de Isabel II water company.

In 1999 the administration of what was then the Contemporary Art Collection of the Regional Ministry for Culture was transferred to the newly created Directorate-General of Archives, Museums and Libraries, and for the first time ever was allocated its own budget for purchasing artworks. During this new phase, the acquisitions philosophy was defined by a somewhat audacious commitment to cutting-edge forms of artistic expression such as photography and engraving with a particular emphasis on promoting young Spanish artists.

The origin of the Photography Collection was the logical consequence of the Regional Ministry’s intense promotion of this art form through a regular programme of exhibitions at the Sala del Canal de Isabel II gallery and the organisation of the annual Image Symposium and accompanying Canal Abierto show. Thanks to the works purchased, produced or donated as a result of these events, the collection has gradually acquired its own unique character and currently represents not only young creators but also prominent living artists and the winners of the photography prizes awarded nationally and by the Regional Government of Madrid. Meanwhile, the collection has also sought to include the diversity of languages, sensitivities and themes that artists use to interpret our time and culture as seen through a camera lens, reasserting women’s issues, for example, or revisiting classical genres such as landscape photography, portraiture and social document.

The Print Collection has emerged since 2002 primarily out of the donations resulting from the Regional Ministry’s agreements with the Actilibre Foundation, the promoter of the International Print and Contemporary Art Editions Fair ESTAMPA and, to a lesser degree, the Temas de Arte Foundation, which organises Edición Madrid, the “Festival of Temptations”. Nowadays, it is one of the most important collections of Spanish graphic art, offering a broad insight into both traditional and innovative techniques, and into the themes and reflections that have interested contemporary artists since the 1960s.  In addition to works by prominent figures such as Joan Miró, Joan Brossa, Eduardo Chillida, Antoni Tápies, Antonio Saura, José Manuel Broto, Equipo Crónica and Juan Muñoz, it also includes more recent proposals by Abraham Lacalle, Ana de Matos, Ivan Larra, Marta Cárdenas, Jon Mikel Euba and Unai Sanmartín, to name just some of those on the long and interesting list of artists represented. And although the majority of these are Spanish, there are also works by David Hockney, Max Ernst, Henri Moore, Jan Hendrix and Damian Hirst in the collection.

At the beginning of the last decade, attention turned once again to the Painting and Sculpture Collection with a view to incorporating artistic trends of the 1970s hitherto omitted, such as the conceptual art of Jordi Pablo’s phonetic sculptures and the work of Antoni Miralda and Patricio Vélez, as well as works by artists involved in the movida madrileña, coinciding with the 25th anniversary of this cultural movement in the capital. At the same time, works using new techniques and media, especially audiovisuals and installations, were also added to the collection. Examples of these are the award-winning video creations from the different editions of the regional government’s ARCO Prize for Young Artists:  works by Martín Sastre, Thomas Köner, Kaoru Katayama and Vicente Blanco.

Since its transfer to the CA2M, the collection has primarily been enriched by works which reflect the latest international artistic trends that have been shown at different Spanish galleries. These include videos by Annica Larson, Roger Welch and Sophie Whettnal, photographs by Axel  Hütte, Martin Parr, Pièrre  Gonnord and Riyas Komu, and the installation by Wilfredo Prieto. Meanwhile, one of the institutional aims of the CA2M is to acquire work produced for its temporary exhibitions in memory of the art centre’s activities. The latest acquisitions in this respect are the Bestué/Vives installation La confirmación and Light Years by Cristina Lucas.