Trobades amb la Col·lecció Martínez Guerricabeitia 1

The sample collects 30 works, 7 of which belong to the Collection Martínez Guerricabeitia and 27 are loans of individual collections and private and public institutions. This exhibition analyses Martín Caballero’s pictorial production of 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. It also reflects about the critical expressionism of the Valencian painter. Rather than speaking in hindsight, we have to identify this exhibition as a set of the most representative features of his work. “L'ull viu” is the title that the very author considered appropriate and portrays perfectly his vital ideas and combative spirit.

The painter uses the language of comic and collage. Equally, it uses deformations and monstrosities as his main mean of questioning. The scenes are composed by several characters link his production to Brueghel or El Bosco. Some of the theme that he denounced (the degradation of nature, the Francoist repression, the military hegemony of the United States, social discriminations and urbanistic speculation) are still hot issues at present day. His works have portrayed social issues provocatively and with acid humour like George Grosz’s drawing at his time, in which characters became a parody of the system.

This sample starts with a new phase of exhibitions titled “Trobades amb la Col·lecció”. It researches visually and critically the careers of the artists that integrate the Collection Martínez Guerricabeitia. Martín Caballero is the first author to be represented because we have a large number of his works, 13 to be precise. This line of research will deepen in the study of the Collection that Jesús Martínez and his wife Carmen García gave to the Universitat de València in 1999. Equally, it will support the commitment of the Universitat de València disseminate among the university community and the civil society the most committed and least pleasant art.