«Salto de página. El libro de artista en el siglo XXI. Colección de Arte Banco Sabadell» (MUA, Alicante)
MUA Museo de la Universidad de Alicante. Alicante
Over the last few years, the Banco Sabadell Art Collection has incorporated a remarkable collection of books by national and international artists that has given rise to one of the few private collections of books by artists that exist in Spain. The Salto de psgina exhibition proposes a tour of this fund grouping the works into five different areas: historical backgrounds, artist's books, object books, photobooks and self-publishing.
The starting point of the exhibition is located in the origins of the art book at the end of the 19th century, when artists began to illustrate texts by writers and poets, and it arrives to our days, with the publications of contemporary artists facilitated by digital technology.
Marcel Duchamp said that an artist's book is a book made by an artist. Putting this premise into practice, it was from the second half of the 20th century when the most avant-garde artists decided to use the book as an instrument of break with traditional art and used this format to transmit ideas, as the conceptual artist Sol LeWitt claimed.
The fundamental specificity of these books is their innovative spirit and their conception as a work of art, taking awareness of the book as an artistic entity of its own and creating an independent genre as previously had been painting, sculpture or video. This conception arrives until our days, when the youngest creators dedicate part of their artistic practice to the self-publishing of publications, making their own the tools provided by current technologies.
Many of the artist’s books that are part of this collection transcend the format of the book and have their continuity in the walls of these rooms, which display works, belonging to the Banco Sabadell Art Collection, of renowned artists such as Alicia Framis, Joan Fontcuberta, Cristina de Middel, Equipo Crónica, José Pedro Croft or Mar Arza, among others.
