Contact reading. Poetics and experimentation in Spain. 1962-1972

The Spain of the 1960s, marked by the apparent stability of Francoism, harboured a cauldron of ideas and artistic expressions that defied established boundaries. The exhibition "Reading by contact. Poetics and experimentation in Spain. 1962-1972" immerses us in a universe of experimentation where language is freed from its conventional bonds to become a vehicle of social and political transformation. Through more than a hundred works, the exhibition, organized by AC/E and the Ministry of Culture as part of Spain’s Guest of Honor at the FIL 2024, invites us to explore how a group of visionary artists used writing, poetry and other artistic disciplines to challenge the status quo and build a freer and more creative future.

From works by authors such as Julio Campal, Ignacio Gómez de Liaño, Elena Asins, Julio Plaza, among others, or constituted in groups such as Problematica 63, group N:O., Zaj, the tour invites you to learn works that play with the plasticity of language to provoke unconstrained conceptions of reading, making all the arts coexist around poetry and, above all, reducing the distances between author and spectator. Marked by the historical events mentioned, which tell us of an escalation in the confrontation of civil society against the government, this exhibition also gives an account of the political caress that is taking in Spain this experimental writing and, in general, the arts according to about the death of the dictator. The sample covers, in short, a decade in which writing functioned in Spain as a vector for play, encounter, urban tour, music, the generation of new forms and, above all, public action, poetic and policy.