Ángel Duarte, Oteiza's disciple who made geometry a social art

In 1954, Angel Duarte (Aldeanueva del Camino, Cáceres, 1930 – Sion, Switzerland, 2007) managed to cross the border with France and finally settle in Paris. Something he had longed for for a long time. Paris at that time was still the capital of European art, New York notwithstanding.

There were Pablo Palazuelo and Eugenio Sempere, but also his friends Agustín Ibarrola, José Duarte and Juan Serrano, with whom he would participate in one of the fundamental episodes in the history of art in 20th century Spain: Team 57.

Connected to this collective effort were Jorge Oteiza, who served as a teacher although he was never part of the group, Néstor Basterretxea, who left the team very early, and Juan Serrano.

[The art that stopped brutalism and the chaos of the Second World War]

Production equipment 57 started from the principles of geometric abstraction to question the assumptions of the art that was imposed, that of abstract expressionism and informalism, as evidenced by the first part of the exhibition which, curated by María Jesús Ávila, is dedicated to her by the Helga de Alvear Museum.

This type of work based on the theory of interactivity of space, which assumed “the plastic interpretation of the dynamic continuity of space”, went against the idea of authorship that informalism and expressionism defendedthat of a genius who pours his individuality onto the surface of the canvas, and they sought an objective system to carry out his works, thus renouncing the individual signature, which also went against the grain of the market.

His intention was for art to reconnect with liferecovering one of the mottos of the historical avant-garde, and had greater social involvement, which soon awakened their interest in design.

It was perhaps the way of understanding this implication that led Equipo 57 to officially dissolve in 1966, nine years after its birth. Ibarrola and José Duarte would focus on Estampa popular, which recovered realism as a revolutionary instrument.

[Mirar (sculpture) contemporaneously]

Ángel Duarte, however, continued to apply the assumptions from which Equipo 57 started in his work: a geometric abstraction based on a system that escaped subjectivity with a project that had a direct social implication, which in his case manifested itself mainly in his projects for public space, some of which are presented.

The works of Ángel Duarte, who recently acquired Helga de Alvear with the intention of depositing them in the Pérez Comendador-Leroux de Hervás Museum, close to his homeland, so that they remain in Extremadura and which are now on display in Cáceres, mostly sculptures, take the hyperbolic paraboloid as the minimum unit to construct spatial developments and whose combinations led to exhaustion.

A rigorous production in which art and science come together and who actively participated in the currents of international optical and kinetic art.

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