The Juan March Foundation takes the colors

Star about books, such as ‘Color’, by Victoria Finlaya captivating journey through the colors: the lapislázuli, the red cochinilla, the black of Campeche … has flooded our lexicon with expressions such as ‘staying blank’, ‘getting purple’, ‘eating a brown’ … The politics was not even immune to him: the gray (Francoist police), the reds (communists) … And today each party is associated with a color.

In 1704 Isaac Newton public ‘Optics’«A revolutionary treaty in which he presented his crucial experiment on the light: he arranged two inverted prisms with a lens between them, then made a solar ray pass through the first prism and the white light broke down into a spectrum of colors. This chromatic beam, concentrated by the lens, then crossed the second prism and the colors rebuilt the lightning light. This experiment was a milestone for physics by demonstrating that color lives in white light. And in 1810, Goethe He published ‘Theory of Colors’, a philosophical treaty in which “he explored the color as a deep emotion born of the opposition between light and darkness, delving into its symbolic dimension.”

At the gates of arc, where Pavilions 7 and 9 of IFEMA will be flooded with multicolored works, the Juan March Foundation Inaugurates the exhibition ‘You have to do with it. The autonomy of color in abstract art ‘(from February 28 to June 8). The title is taken from a phrase from Walter Benjamin, for whom “The color must be seen”.

The history of art has belittled color in favor of form. But with abstract art The color is released of the line, of the form, and becomes free, autonomous; It becomes independent. The sample addresses the color as a noun, not as adjective. Nor as theme. There have already been exhibitions such as ‘monochrome’ in Reina Sofía. «It is no other exposure about color. There have been, and some very good. It is not a colorful, colored exhibition, about color, ”he warns Manuel Fontán del Juncocommissioner of the sample, together with María Zozayawho conceive the sample in two parts.

On the one hand, the famous white cube of contemporary museography, where 80 works of the last century (between 1915 and 2025) are exhibited in numerous supports: painting, sculpture, work on paper, textiles, ceramics, photography, facilities, cinema, video and artist books. To them are added more 120 documents, books and objects. Artists for whom color is an essential principle: from Malevich and his little ‘red square’, to Turner, Mondrian, Albers, Fontana, Anish Kapoor, Olafur Eliasson (A colored spectrum kaleidoscope is exhibited), Thomas Ruff, Anthony Caro, Wolfgang Tillmans, Dan Flavin (and his fluorescent tubes), Damien Hirst (and his works of multicolored points), Yves KleinManzoni, Team 57, Frank Stella, Ellsworth Kelly, John Baldesari, Richard Serra, Donald Judd, Gerhard Richter, Teresa Lanceta … For all of them the color is essential and “is no longer subjected by the line turned into writing”, in Klein’s words.

There is ‘IN SIT’ facilities. In the lobby, ‘imagined memories’, of Mitsuo Miuraand ‘Yellow pink red blue mountain’, from Ugo Rondinone. On the ladder, an installation of veils printed overwhelmed by Felipe Pantone. ‘Chromosaturation’, by Carlos Cruz-DiezIt is «an artificial environment that immerses the visitor in an absolute monochrome situation. It is invited to penetrate each camera and stay in it until the color seems to fade. The experience causes disturbances in the retina ». “Color is an autonomous event that does not require the form,” warns Cruz-Diez.

Historically, skin tone has been used to establish privileges and exclusions. The Brazilian artist Angelica dassresident in Toledo, is present with his work ‘Humane’ (2012), which places us in front of the variety of nuances that inhabit the skin. Like the catalog of makeup bases of a cosmetic firm. The tour closes with a showcase suspended with artist books: Matisse, Buren, Sol Lewitt …

But the exhibition includes two more spaces, which you have to enter through curtains. The first, analog, with the yellow -painted walls, is conceived as a Curiosities Cabinet or a chamber of wonders, which brings together publications, documents, diagrams, minerals, pigments and dyes … masks of female mummies, the color reconstruction of the so -called ‘Kore of Quios’, a portrait of Matisse painted by DerainLoan of Tate … both belong to Fauvism, a movement centered on squeaky, aggressive and violent colors (the beasts of art).

In addition, material used by FACTUM ART for the facsimile of the ‘Madame de Pompadour’ portrait of Boucher; Wool skeins dyed, assigned by Real Tapices Factorythat hang from the roof and that they remember the Zoco of Marrakech; samples of Ana Requerostained glass Carlos Muñoz de Pablosa picture of Genoese In which he uses the three primary colors (blue, yellow and red) … by William Edward Burghardt du Bois, a series of statistical graphics that illustrate the condition of the descendants of ancient African slaves residing in the United States are exhibited. The Universal Exhibition of Paris of 1900 was presented.

The second space, complementary to the first, is a digital installation. First incursion of the Juan March Foundation in the immersive world. ‘Coloramas’developed by Aníbal Santaella and the commissioners, is presented as a Expansive Chamber With nine screens. It lasts 7 minutes. “We are not going to make immersive exhibitions,” says Fontán del Junco, “but we can’t keep back to the digital revolution.”