IT MUST BE SEEN.
The Autonomy of Color in Abstract Art
2025Catalog published for the exhibition “It Must Be Seen. The Autonomy of Color in Abstract Art” from February 28 to June 8, 2025, at the Juan March Foundation, Madrid.
Edit: Juan March Foundation
Year: 2025
Texts: Manuel Fontán del Junco, María Zozaya Álvarez, David Batchelor, Esther Leslie, Paul Smith, Alejandro Klecker de Elizalde
Pages: 310
Binding: soft cover
Design: Underbau
Language: Spanish
ISBN: 978-84-7075-695-5
Language is what tells us something about the essence of a thing. The word color originates from the Indo-European root kel (to hide), and in Germanic it gave rise to the word helm (helmet) and the root khallo (to cover, to hide). As language evolved, the meaning shifted from “to hide” to “rays of light that we perceive through the eyes.”
Even more interesting is the etymological root of the word in German (Farbe), which originates from the Old High German concept far(a)wa, meaning lighthouse. The etymological evolution of the word supports Goethe’s idea that “color in itself is a degree of darkness.” Modern theories of color spring from this. The exhibition “You Must See It” places color at the center, freed from form and contingency. A multifaceted approach that deeply analyzes both 20th and 21st-century abstract artists and the earlier theoretical references that influenced them.
PHOTOGRAPHER PAINTERS
EXIT – 61
This issue continues to focus on the photographic image, even though the perspective is guided by the painter’s eyes. These painters have and continue to invent painting from a unique viewpoint. They have been able to regenerate new ways of doing, looking, and being.
2014 / ANTES DE IRSE
40 ideas sobre la pintura
2014 / Antes de irse. 40 ideas sobre la pintura brings together the pictorial proposals of 40 artists who work around painting, exploring, and expanding its language.
GENERACIÓN 2013
Proyectos de arte Caja Madrid
Many of the authors of Generación 2013 agree that in their respective projects—directly, without any artifice—concepts such as emptiness, ruin, loss, and disappearance are addressed; an approach that, in tune with current events in the world, is open to enrichment through multiple interpretations by viewers.