The art of printmaking is as varied as there are artists specialized in this discipline or as Saramago said, artists have “little brains in the fingers of their hands.” This great variety of ideas is combined in Fuendetodos with the Graphic Art exhibition that shows the 25 winning works of the Graphic Art Contest for Young Creators of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando throughout its 25 editions.
The exhibition, organized by the Goya-Fuendetodos Cultural Consortium and with the collaboration of the Zaragoza Provincial Council , starting this Thursday, in the Ignacio Zuloaga room in Fuendetodos, exhibits the 25 works that offer a retrospective and evolution of this art and the prestigious award . The exhibition can be visited until September 29. The hours are from Tuesday to Sunday from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. and from 4:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. On Mondays the room is closed, except for holidays.
Wood engravings, metal engravings, xylography, thread printing, lithography, silk-screen printing and images obtained through digital devices are some of the techniques that have been used for the prints in the exhibition. “From a point of view of technical resources, the evolution is perceived, a change in the gaze, in the movement of the artists and the work,” indicates the subdelegate of the National Chalcography of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, Javier Blas. He also adds that the visitor will be able to see the evolution of style and theme over the years, “In the late 90s and early 2000s, gender issues began to appear, especially by female artists. In recent years, images of ecological issues appear and in the 90s text is introduced into the image itself.”
Over the years, this competition has become a meeting point for the various educational centres dedicated to the art of printmaking, whilst maintaining its initial objective: a patronage effort to promote the work of new creators, providing them with a means to showcase their activity and encourage their consolidation as graphic artists.
The exhibition and competition represent a crossroads where artists express their ideas and foster their creativity without any kind of constraint, combining traditional methods with new systems of multiple image generation.
ABOUT THE GRAPHIC ART CONTEST FOR YOUNG CREATORS
In 1996, on the occasion of the commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the birth of Francisco de Goya, and the 200th anniversary of the invention of lithography , the Graphic Art Contest for Young Creators was launched. Since then, every year, the National Calcography of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, together with the Royal Mint-National Mint and Stamp Factory, the Fundació Miró Mallorca and the Azcona Foundation, have been calling this competition.
Currently, among the works presented, two prizes are awarded by a prestigious jury. An edition of each of the works is made in the National Chalcography workshops and they are part of a collective exhibition and a catalog that informs about the winners. In addition, the winners are awarded a scholarship for one of the courses in the Graphic Works Workshops taught at the Fundació Miró in Mallorca.