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.