Carmen Calvo

In the 1970s Carmen Calvo embarked on one of the most personal journeys in Spanish art. Thanks to her training in fine arts and in the world of pottery, she has known how to subvert codes and treat clay as if it was painting or sculpture. Fascinated by archaeology, she organises small mounds or assorted objects in the same way that archaeologists or shopkeepers set out their finds or merchandise. On the other hand, her shelf collections consist of plaster forms extracted from cardboard moulds, forms whose austere aesthetics hard back to Morandi. Her photographs manipulated with objects or paint constitute a lucid social critique of the closed society of post-war Spain, its repressive institutions and its moral straitjackets. Childhood is a recurring motif for her and in this exhibition her final piece alludes to an episode of child abuse that occurred in the 1990s.

In 2018 Carmen Calvo produced a series of modified postcards, El tiempo que apasiona [The Time We Will Fall in Love With], which she has completed with postcards from the Picasso Museum.

Carmen Calvo has received numerous public commissions and won many awards, including the National Plastic Arts Prize in 2013 and the Julio Gonzalez International Prize.