SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Jan 12 (EUROPA PRESS) –
TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes hosted this Wednesday the presentation of the bibliographic and documentary collection recently acquired by the Cabildo de Tenerife from the historic Conca de La Laguna gallery.
The Councilor for Culture of the Cabildo de Tenerife, Enrique Arriaga; the insular director of Culture, Alejandro Krawietz; the artistic director of TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes, Gilberto González; and the founder and owner of the Conca gallery, Gonzalo Díaz, were in charge of publicizing this new acquisition.
Arriaga highlighted that “these collections, made up of more than 10,000 documents, which now become part of the TEA Collection, will become a great attraction and will allow a more in-depth understanding of the creative process of the islands from 1970 to the present.”
Likewise, the Minister of Culture indicated that this center is proud to incorporate this material into its collection, taking into account “the great value of this documentary testimony.”
In addition, Enrique Arriaga highlighted that “Gonzalo Díaz, who became the first Canarian gallery owner, was a visionary who in the year 71 opted for a change in the management model of gallery spaces, turning them into a business center and as support for cultural institutions, since then it has been a top-level cultural benchmark in the Canary Islands “.
In his opinion, “the acquisition of these funds by TEA is a magnificent finishing touch to the fifty-year history of this gallery.”
6,800 PHOTOS
In the preliminary inventory, the presence of artists’ folders, 2,507 catalogs, 369 books, 871 magazines, 500 newspapers (Section Culture local extracts 1973-2000), 281 Conca editions, 250 filing cabinets, some of the mythical posters of Conca as well as of many other meetings and exhibitions, 3,627 slides of exhibitions and artists (in 46 boxes), 41 boxes with posters and artist information, vhs, cassettes and DVD of interviews and exhibitions and 6,800 photos.
The insular director of Culture, Alejandro Krawietz, reiterated the importance of this day for TEA, since the incorporation of documentary collections implies “the possibility of making available to citizens and researchers a documentary collection that helps explain crucial years in the artistic space of the islands, which has to do with the avant-garde processes in the area of transition and that will allow us to explain very important phenomenologies of the cultural tradition in the Canary Islands “.
In this sense, he recalled that “documentation funds are essential in an art center for the construction of research, stories, new views of history and the future.”
In his opinion, “being able to count on the funds of a room like Conca is an essential element.”
BETTER UNDERSTAND THE CONTEXT
Gilberto González, artistic director of TEA, explained the reason for this incorporation and the work process that will now be followed with these funds and recalled that Gonzalo Díaz created in 1971 a fundamental space for a series of artists and that now these funds will allow a better understanding the context of readings and conversations that surrounded artists such as Gonzalo González, Cándido Camacho, Juan Hernández, Ernesto Valcárcel, Juan Bordes, José Antonio García Álvarez, Juan Gopar, Ildefonso Aguilar or Fernando Álamo, among others.
“Many of these artists, present in the TEA Collection, would end up finding with this background the thickness that allows us to understand the disruptive and open nature that their work had during these decades,” he commented.
In fact, he said that “these funds will also make it possible to draw a genealogy for future exhibition studies in a broader way” and highlighted the new way of designing and thinking about the image.
“All these posters and these Conca publications are enormously revolutionary with respect to what was being done at that time,” said González, who announced that TEA has already completed the inventory and that this year the cataloging process will begin to put it into gradually at the service of all citizens.
Gonzalo Díaz thanked the fact that all this Conca documentation has been inventoried and affirmed that “it is a good fund that has been obtained by TEA, since it is very valid and very complete.”
During his speech, he hoped that both the public and the TEA could now make the most of all this material, which is really important since they were a reinforcement of the exhibitions of the artists of the 60s, 70s and 80s generations.
