Recovering a figure such as Marisa González, who won the Velázquez Prize in 2023,
is fundamental for the institution. Above all because it opens up the possibility of getting to know,
of researching, of really delving into a generation of women about whom we know little or nothing.
It is a living memory, a memory that is still there and that we have not researched enough.
An exhibition of these characteristics, which is an anthology that brings together her main works over the last 50 years,
really allows us to open a gap so that new generations can project ourselves
into that past that we do not know from the voice of its own protagonists, who are women understood as subaltern subjects
who had to somehow reverse and crack a context in order to be able to project themselves as artists.
And above all, figures like Marisa, with works in relation to feminism and social movements.
Marisa is an artist very present in the context of Madrid from the associationism.
She was always present as a student, from the associative movement, as a student at the School of Fine Arts.
But she had to leave for the United States in search of a contemporary education.
Let's say that Marisa came from an anti-Franco militancy. She did not come from that double feminist and anti-Franco militancy,
but she was more anti-Franco. And suddenly she arrived in the United States and opened up, like the whole United States in the 70's,
to all the activism that was happening in Chicago and Washington in relation to feminism, feminisms, civil rights movements, pacifism.
When I finished Fine Arts in Madrid I went to the United States, to the Art Institute of Chicago,
and there I met my mentor and teacher Sonia Sheridan.
And, among other classrooms and other subjects, I decided to focus on one thing, which was called generative systems.
There we had many machines to create art. The world's first colour photocopier
had been invented 2 or 3 years earlier and we had it there in the classroom.
It worked wonders to such an extent that the inventor of the photocopier said
“I have created a machine that reproduces reality as faithfully as possible and you transform that reality”.
And he came to see what we were doing, he said
“I can't believe that this machine is an instrument of creation”.
I try to keep up to date, but as I always say, when I started there was only one machine, two, three types of photocopiers,
but now there are a thousand resources, a thousand machines and a thousand ways.
So I don't want to spread myself thin by trying all kinds of tools,
so I concentrate on one, although I have already tried artificial intelligence.
She is an artist who is still active. So the conversation remains open.
Furthermore, Marisa's work is never closed, she continually reconfigures her series.
For this exhibition you will see many posters that end in 2025 because she has reconfigured,
she has finished, she has gone back to her archive to produce some new work as well.
Come and see the exhibition and you will see different stages.
It is not a collective exhibition, it is a individual exhibition,
although it could seem to be a collective exhibition because of the diversity of resources
and themes that I have developed over more than 50 years.