Richard Serra was a great artist, as great as his sculptures and as great as the story of an impossible disappearance that the writer Joan Tallón narrates in his brilliant novel 'Obra maestro' (Anagrama), the chronicle of the volatilization of one of the creations. of the deceased sculptor.
In 2006, the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid discovered that it had lost a 38-ton steel sculpture by Serra, commissioned twenty years earlier for the art center's inauguration. In 1986, the institution, a showcase of Spanish contemporary art, had paid the now deceased artist 37 million pesetas (220,000 euros today) for 'Equal-Pararell/Guernica-Bengasi', which was the name of this sculpture made up of four solid blocks of steel that sought to put two historical events on the same level: the bombing of the Condor Legion on the civilian population in the town of Guernica on April 26, 1937 and an event contemporary with the creation of the sculpture, the attack on April 15, 1937. 1986 to the Libyan city of Benghazi by American aviation, as explained in the commentary of the work that still keeps the Reina Sofía in his web page.
This comment is the only thing that the Reina Sofía retains from 'Equal-Pararell/Guernica-Bengasi'. Because the work itself, that 38-ton giant (to introduce it into the building, part of its façade had to be demolished and raised again, Tallón recalls), disappeared without an explanation being found. Or rather, with an explanation that does not sit well with the Spanish cultural establishment of the time.
But what happened to the sculpture? The key figure in this mystery is Jesús Macarrón, owner of an art storage company, a pioneer in setting up exhibitions and specialized in large works of art. Macarrón, who was in charge of guarding Serra's work in a warehouse in the Madrid town of Arganda del Rey, ends up in ruin due to a debt with Social Security while he continues working with the public administration, which does not pay him what he was owed. owes precisely for that debt, in a diabolical loop. When he went bankrupt in 1998, Macarrón informed the administration that he could no longer take charge of the warehouse in which he kept the work. From there, responsibility melts, possibly as it did with the sculpture.
«Everything seems to indicate that the work was cast, but the police investigation was unable to determine who cast it, how it was made or at what time. For years, this work was ignored, it was lost from sight and anything could happen,” Tallón explained to this newspaper in 2022, when he published his book. Tallón defined Serra as “a creator of ideas that he captures in sculptures.” «Those ideas are imperishable, but not his physical works, which are so enormous that they are very difficult to store. For this reason, when many of his exhibitions end, the sculptures are melted down, because it is cheaper to make them again, if they are needed for another exhibition, than to move them to a large warehouse and store them for a long time. The physical work disappears, but not the idea, which can be recovered.
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