From this weekend until March 9, you can visit at the C3A de la Junta de Andalucía the exhibition “De ida y return”, the first individual exhibition in this space of the artistic duo formed by the Cordovan artist Alegría Castillo and Cádiz. José Antonio Sánchez Piñeroknown in the art world as Alegría and Piñero. The exhibition proposal is framed in the decision of the new director of the center, Jimena Blazquezto bet on the new Andalusian creators, even if it also represents the definitive consecration in her own country of Alegría Castillo, born in Córdoba in 1985.
She is one of the best-known representatives of the new generations of Cordoba art, a group of creators under 40 who have managed to make their way despite the difficult circumstances experienced by the visual arts in the city since the great recession of 2007, since it is in this context that the collection was drastically reduced, leading to the gradual closure of all galleries of art. who had animated cultural life.
These new promotions of creators, born from the mid-1980s to the end of the 1990s, are aesthetically characterized by the diversity of the proposals, amplitude product options that contemporary art allows.
In terms of biography, extensive formal training in the field of arts or design and also mobility, obligatory in a field where it is necessary to leave Córdoba both to train in Fine Arts and to broaden one’s vision, access major galleries and fairs and thus connect to the market.
Perhaps the most surprising thing is that, despite this weakness of the private sector in a city which today lacks a professional gallery present in major national events, all the artists agree to be grateful to back that the institutions have given them in the city of Córdoba through spaces and organizations such as the Casa de la Juventud or the Vimcorsa room of the Town Hall, the Botí Foundation of Plastic Arts of the Provincial Delegation or the C3A, the Comic Theater of the Junta de Andalucía or Antonio Gala Foundation. In other words, for them, exhibiting in Cordoba has been accessible, but reaching galleries that can move their work is something much more complex.
Fran Baena in one of her interventions.
One of the names with the greatest projection of Córdoba art is the one already mentioned Joy Castlewho “nervously” inaugurated his first exhibition at the C3A yesterday with his partner. As he explained to ABC, “it is an excellent opportunity to show our work in such a transcendent institutional space and with the means it offers.”
“The truth is that being from Córdoba not so long ago, I considered the C3A as something very distant,” she explains. Castillo maintains that Córdoba, not having Faculty of Fine Arts“it lacks a context as strong as that which Seville or Granada can have”. “There is no network of rooms,” he explains, “but the institutional spaces have always given us their support and we have felt welcomed.”
In Córdoba, before this exhibition, pieces by Alegría and Piñero were seen in the Boti Foundation or in the Iniciarte Space. Outside, they have already exhibited individually in cities like León, Huelva, Cádiz, Santander or Málaga. In addition, they maintain an extensive program in the Sevillian municipality of La Puebla de Cazalla, where they have promoted a group under the name Ojo Pértico.
The painter Laura Vinós in her studio
The creation of groups and alliances is a characteristic that has been maintained in the art world for decades and which, in Cordoba, has allowed us to meet new creators. A clear example in this sense is that of Algazara, a group with a very Andalusian background and whose works have been seen in recent years in spaces such as Cómico or Diputación. Prominent names from this environment are, for example Clara Gomez Campos, born in 1990 and closely linked to the Upper Guadiato region, or Sota Pérez, born in 1986.
Gómez Campos, whose work reflects on the role of women in art and cultural concepts in the creation of collective identity, is currently presenting a traveling exhibition at the Boti Foundationwhile Sota Pérez —born in Huelva but trained and established in Córdoba— benefited from an artistic residency at the C3A and, as a muralist, left his characteristic abstract creations on the basketball court of the Orive Gardens and now in the Peña Flamenca El Almíbar. Gómez Campos and Sota Pérez acknowledge having benefited from support in the city. “The Botí Foundation has always supported me in everything,” explains Gómez Campos, while Pérez highlights the support that the work of the Youth House has given me.
Sota Pérez in one of his works on a wall
Another institution that has played a fundamental role in the emergence of new talents in Cordoban art is the Antonio Gala Foundation for young creators. For two decades, artists subsequently consecrated have continued to come to the convent of Corpus Christi.
Many of them are creators from outside Córdoba who, in one way or another, have maintained links with the city, but also born in Córdoba like Rafael Jiménez (1989), Virginie Bersabé (1990), Laura Vinós (1998) or Fran Baena from Prague (1999), among others.
The first of them later served as a tutor to the Foundation itself and, with his very personal work and in which he investigates through the deciphering of reality and the passage of time, he managed to expose, for example , in the Madrid Modus Operandi Gallery. Virgina Bersabé is, for her part, a reference in the most recent Spanish figuration and her work has been seen in spaces such as the PDP gallery in Paris or the European Museum of Contemporary Art (MEAM) in Barcelona.
The Cordoba artist Clara Gómez Campos in one of her exhibitions
Virginia’s work reflects body changes feminine and memory and has a magnificent line of work in muralism, with suggestive interventions in many cities of Spain or in abandoned farms.
The youngest in this collection of new names are barely over 20, but they have already achieved something as complex as getting a major national gallery interested in their work. This is the case of Laura Vinós and Fran Baenawho both work with the prestigious Yusto/Giner gallery, based in the Spanish capital and also in Marbella. Vinós, linked to the Trassierra neighborhood, is a painter with very suggestive work, in which she moves away from the literal to establish associations with elements of popular culture.
Fran Baena, who is currently exhibiting at La Coracha at Malaga City Hall, is the author of a work full of irony on contemporary life, always melancholic. As he explains, living in the Gala Foundation “It was a luxury.”
The painter Virginia Bersabé in one of her proposals in abandoned buildings
Like his colleagues, he believes that Córdoba has treated him well with projects in which he has participated such as “Botí Abierto” or the exhibition “Everywhere, reality and desire”, which Mario Guixeras organized in 2022 at the Rafael Botí Foundation and which brought together the works of eight emerging artists from Córdoba. In addition to Vinós and Baena, FAG fellows Ana de Lara, Irene Anguita, Esther Ventura, Chema Rodríguez, Carlos Quiralte and Manuel García also appeared, all born in Córdoba in the 80s and 90s.
This entire list of artists, which is only a representation of the most visible today of this promotion born between 1985 and 2000, shows that talent does not rest in Cordoba. This also shows that the expansion of exhibition spaces that the city has experienced in recent years and which has favored both the public establishments as private entities, allowed for greater dynamism and allowed young creators to make themselves known and continue to progress more easily.
Botí Foundation Festivals
The same goes for the festivals in the province promoted by the Periféricos program of the Botí Foundation, in which the vast majority of the artists cited in this report participated.
The important debt of this generation and in general of the plastic arts of Córdoba is the commercial network of galleries and buyers who has existed for several decadeslived its golden years at the turn of the century then collapsed with the great economic crisis of 2007. For the moment, nothing indicates this, but the appearance of new artists is always an incentive for this ” miracle” can finally happen.
