El arte sucede. Origen de las prácticas conceptuales en España (1965-1980)

El arte sucede aims to synthetically reconstruct the landscape of transgression of artistic behaviour that materialised in Spain from the second half of the Sixties to the end of the Seventies; a time that craved freedom, with art practices being understood as a space of questioning and exploration, a space in which a new sensibility flourished that represented a break-away from traditional languages.

In the period covered by the exhibition, the transforming potential of everyday and natural materials, or the relational aspects between minimal, primary structures that soon led to diverse forms of Actionism are highlighted. Gradually, there was a move towards a cross-section of disciplines, the integration of mechanisms related to philosophy, sociology, psychoanalysis, politics, technology, popular culture, science, architecture, music and language in the creative process.

The ideas and starting points stemmed from lived experiences, materials and places in close proximity, the search for areas that were capable of releasing renewed vitality in thought that was in keeping with particular purposes and sensibilities, and the same longing to bring art and life closer together. There was the increased use of technology in this period among the artists: video, film, audiovisual projection, photography and reel-to-reel tape recorders - modern tools with enormous potential. These mediums could be used to recall ephemeral actions, creating documentaries or fiction from reality as well as experimenting with images with no references other than the images themselves in transformation. These new mediums helped to provide a representation of space, movement, and most importantly time, that were previously unheard of in plastic arts.