The new exhibition Libro de arte. Colección Banco Sabadell can be visited from 13 September to 10 November 2017 at the SabadellHerrero exhibition room in Oviedo. The exhibition displays a selection of artist’s books included in the Banco Sabadell Art Collection.

«Over the last few years Banco Sabadell Art Collection has collected a noteworthy collection of national and international artist’s books. The Art Book (Libro de Arte) exhibition offers a journey through this collection in five areas: historical events; contemporary bibliophilia, artist’s books, book-object and photobooks.

»The starting point of the exhibition lies in the origins of art books in the XX century, when painters began to illustrate the texts written by writers and poets, and this has continued all the way through to today, with publications by contemporary artists using digital technology.

»Marcel Duchamp said that “an artist’s book is a book which is created by an artist”. Based on this idea, from the second half of the XX century, avant-garde arists began to use books as an instrument to break with traditional art, and use books as a format to convey ideas, as confirmed by the conceptual artist Sol LeWitt.

»The main specificity of these books is their innovative nature and their conception as a work of art, understanding the book as its own artistic entity and creating an independent genre, just as painting, sculpture and video are. This conception is still valid today, as even the youngest creators dedicate part of their art to desktop publishing, turning the tools offered to them by current technologies into their own.

»Many of the artists’ books which form part of this collection transcend book format, and their relevance is displayed on the walls of these rooms, which exhibit works belonging to Banco Sabadell Art Collection by renowned international artists such as Sonia Delaunay, Pablo Palazuelo, John Baldessari, Jaume Plensa or Equipo Crónica, among others.»

Rocío Santa Cruz
Curator, ArtsLibris