Equipo 57

1957 was a key year in the renewal and structuring of the Spanish artistic landscape. In the same year the group El Paso was formed in Madrid and Equipo 57 in Paris. Although the approaches of these two groups were opposed, both maintained a sustained dialogue with the main international trends - informalist abstraction in the case of El Paso and geometric abstraction in the case of Equipo 57.
Its founders are the sculptor Jorge Oteiza and the painters Angel Duarte, José Duarte, Agustín Ibarrola and Juan Serrano. In its founding manifesto, Equipo 57 called for a plastic revolution against the "artistic corruption" of its time, which was dominated by merchants, cultural institutions and artists "encumbered by romantic reminiscences, by literary, tactile, calligraphic arguments based on Western naturalism". He insists on the need for collective action, "an aesthetic awareness of the collective", which integrates the artist into society because "the work of art is a political solution".

As the writer and filmmaker Ángel Llorente emphasises, Equipo 57 advocates "the defence of a new artistic behaviour in society. A social commitment assumed, albeit with certain contradictions, from an artistic practice of geometric abstraction". The aim is to re-insert the artist in society in order to reach practical solutions in a rapprochement between art and design.

In order to carry out its renovating programme, Equipo 57 is based on scientific approaches through a strong interest in geometric concepts. Starting with graphic work, this collective approaches sculpture, architecture and even urban planning as a logical consequence of its research into the interactivity and continuity between plastic space (form, colour, line) and physical space (masses, surfaces, volumes).

Finally, Equipo 57's experience was short-lived, as it was dissolved in 1962 due to differences of opinion and following the imprisonment of Agustín Ibarrola. Its approaches, however, resonate with the work of prolific artists such as Pablo Palazuelo and Victor Vasarely, also represented at LÔAC.

EXHIBITED WORKS:

-Interactivity, 1957