Conference EL PASO: Vanguardia y Compromiso

The director of the Martín Chirino Foundation of Art and Thought, Jesús M. Castaño, gives a lecture on July 2, at 7:00 p.m., at the Castillo de la Luz, on the importance of the El Paso group, of which the sculptor Martín Chirino was a member, as the artistic movement of the Spanish avant-garde of the last century. Castaño brings a new perspective that allows us to elaborate on the history of this group on the occasion of the El Paso exhibition. Vanguardia y Compromiso, which is hosted by the Castillo de la Luz, headquarters of the Martín Chirino Foundation, until 31 August, as part of the different events organised in 2025 to commemorate the centenary of the birth of Martín Chirino.

An exhibition project under the curatorship of Jesús M. Castaño, which brings together works by the artists who converged on El Paso with the aim of participating in a collective action to renew culture, and which is accompanied by a publication that allows us to deepen and assess the role that this formation played in the cultural world of the time and in the history of art.

In the opinion of Jesús M. Castaño, the irruption of El Paso, active from February 1957 to May 1960, meant a profound aesthetic and plastic renewal, with a long transcendence that marked the validity of a current pigeonholed within informalism and the poetics of other art. The commitment of these artists was not limited only to aesthetic aspects, but they were also concerned with a revision of Spain as a sign of identity. The active militancy of its members gave them all a role and facilitated an international projection in their subsequent careers.