Teresa Gancedo: The Body of Symbols
RocioSantaCruz Gallery is pleased to present 鈥淭he Body of Symbols鈥�, an exhibition of the late production of the artist Teresa Gancedo (Le贸n, 1937), halfway between surrealism and the objectual.
When, at the beginning of the 1970s, Linda Nochlin asked herself Why there were no great female artists?, she was thinking above all about the role of great 鈥� and absent 鈥� female figures in the history of art in a globalized context. Without going into details about the situation in Spain, Nochlin highlighted one of the most deeply rooted realities in artistic creation. And the fact is that already in the seventies (and still today) it is necessary to rethink the traditional roles and expectations imposed on women. However, the critique of the notion of genius, which has historically hindered those who have approached a canonical and outdated history of art in feminine terms, was of paramount importance at the end of the last century and remains so at the beginning of the current one.
Today, Gancedo continues to paint, overturning perceptions of women, even though decades have passed since she began her artistic production. An activity centered on the plastic language of painting that she will not abandon as long as she has a space of her own, a place to dialogue with Virginia Wolf and her conceptualization of the obstacles that patriarchal structures use, with less and less success, to rob women of their autonomy and hinder their creative development.
One of the most important milestones in Teresa Gancedo鈥檚 career was the selection of her work for the exhibition 鈥淣ew Painting from Spain. With this curatorship, Margit Rowell conceived one of the most outstanding exhibitions of the 1980s, making Gancedo, along with Carmen Calvo, one of the first women to exhibit at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. This historic exhibition, considered one of the most important retrospectives for the future of Spanish painting, proclaimed one of the theses that would later define the beginning of the decade: Far from the old Franco dictatorship that had devastated Spain, the art scene of the time was moving away from 鈥淪panish aggressiveness鈥� and focusing on a new line in which the poetic, the conceptual, the objective, or even the symbolic or dreamlike reigned supreme. In the end, this exhibition stood out for offering an image of Spain that was suitable for its international projection, as well as for emphasizing a creative maturity that was paradoxically facilitated by Franco鈥檚 isolation from the international avant-garde.
But history is what it is, and as early as 1982, the return to plastic rhetoric was inevitable. Documenta VII in Kassel, curated by Rudi Fuchs, or in Spain, the appearance of ARCO鈥�82, curated by Juana de Aizpuru, as well as the exhibitions 鈥�1980鈥� or 鈥淢adrid D.F.鈥�. (both presided over by image critics), confirmed a return to the pictorial poetics of art. or 鈥淢adrid D.F.鈥� (both led by image critics), reaffirmed a return to the image poetics defined by Gancedo, which he will never abandon. We are faced with a figure permanently committed to his work, distancing himself from the practices that, framed in what Sim贸n March谩n once defined as 鈥渘ew artistic behaviors,鈥� sought to move painting away from the hegemonic narrative.
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RocioSantaCruz Gallery is pleased to present 鈥淭he Body of Symbols鈥�, an exhibition of the late production of the artist Teresa Gancedo (Le贸n, 1937), halfway between surrealism and the objectual.
When, at the beginning of the 1970s, Linda Nochlin asked herself Why there were no great female artists?, she was thinking above all about the role of great 鈥� and absent 鈥� female figures in the history of art in a globalized context. Without going into details about the situation in Spain, Nochlin highlighted one of the most deeply rooted realities in artistic creation. And the fact is that already in the seventies (and still today) it is necessary to rethink the traditional roles and expectations imposed on women. However, the critique of the notion of genius, which has historically hindered those who have approached a canonical and outdated history of art in feminine terms, was of paramount importance at the end of the last century and remains so at the beginning of the current one.
Today, Gancedo continues to paint, overturning perceptions of women, even though decades have passed since she began her artistic production. An activity centered on the plastic language of painting that she will not abandon as long as she has a space of her own, a place to dialogue with Virginia Wolf and her conceptualization of the obstacles that patriarchal structures use, with less and less success, to rob women of their autonomy and hinder their creative development.
One of the most important milestones in Teresa Gancedo鈥檚 career was the selection of her work for the exhibition 鈥淣ew Painting from Spain. With this curatorship, Margit Rowell conceived one of the most outstanding exhibitions of the 1980s, making Gancedo, along with Carmen Calvo, one of the first women to exhibit at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. This historic exhibition, considered one of the most important retrospectives for the future of Spanish painting, proclaimed one of the theses that would later define the beginning of the decade: Far from the old Franco dictatorship that had devastated Spain, the art scene of the time was moving away from 鈥淪panish aggressiveness鈥� and focusing on a new line in which the poetic, the conceptual, the objective, or even the symbolic or dreamlike reigned supreme. In the end, this exhibition stood out for offering an image of Spain that was suitable for its international projection, as well as for emphasizing a creative maturity that was paradoxically facilitated by Franco鈥檚 isolation from the international avant-garde.
But history is what it is, and as early as 1982, the return to plastic rhetoric was inevitable. Documenta VII in Kassel, curated by Rudi Fuchs, or in Spain, the appearance of ARCO鈥�82, curated by Juana de Aizpuru, as well as the exhibitions 鈥�1980鈥� or 鈥淢adrid D.F.鈥�. (both presided over by image critics), confirmed a return to the pictorial poetics of art. or 鈥淢adrid D.F.鈥� (both led by image critics), reaffirmed a return to the image poetics defined by Gancedo, which he will never abandon. We are faced with a figure permanently committed to his work, distancing himself from the practices that, framed in what Sim贸n March谩n once defined as 鈥渘ew artistic behaviors,鈥� sought to move painting away from the hegemonic narrative.
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