VERSIÓN INGLESA ENGLISH VERSION - Fundación César Manrique

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an important factor in triggering the artistic revival that took place in the years that followed. This
private association was founded by Eugenio D’Ors in 1941 with the aim of recovering the modernity
that existed prior to the war and to invigorate the artistic environment of the age, to a degree. It
grouped critics, artists, architects, diplomats, gallery owners, professionals and collectors, including the
Countess of Campo Alange, Luis Felipe Vivanco, Ángel Ferrant, José Camón Aznar, Manuel Sánchez
Camargo, Juan Antonio Gaya Nuño, Rafael Santos Torroella, Josep Llorens Artigas, Ricardo Gullón,
Pablo Beltrán de Heredia, Cesáreo Rodríguez-Aguilera and Conchita Montes. Although headquartered
at the Biosca gallery, some of its activities took place in the showrooms of the Museum of Modern
Art, with which it maintained constant ties, to the point that the academy has been regarded as the
seed of what would later be the Museum of Contemporary Art, an institution much more open to
modernity.
The importance of the Brief Academy can only be understood in its historic context: its highly
eclectic yearly exhibitions, called the Salones de los Once (Showrooms of the eleven) progressively
converged with contemporary artistic trends. Hence, as opposed to the most aesthetically and
ideologically traditional academic figuration that prevailed in Madrid at the time, the Brief Academy
encouraged a certain modernity that began with the recovery of some of the majors of the Spanish
historic avant-garde, such as Palencia, Gargallo, Solana, Torres García, Barradas, Blanchard or Miró. But
from its first exhibition, devoted to Nonell (a single painting) in 1942, the academy’s proposals became
bolder and bolder, making space in the latter years, in the fifties, for some of the artists who were
establishing the guidelines of modernity pursuant to international tendencies. Such, for instance, is the
case of Oteiza, Tàpies, Cuixart, Saura or Millares, who presented their works in this Madrilenian forum
in the early fifties. Nonetheless, most of the artists who exhibited in the Brief Academy could generally
be said to engage in moderately modern figuration: this description fits, for instance, Rafael Zabaleta,
one of D’Ors protégés at the time, and Miguel Villá, San José, Eduardo Vicente, Cirilo Martínez Novillo
or the group of “Indalianos” 6 .
More or less simultaneously with the Salones de los Once in Madrid, the so-called Salones de
Octubre (October Showrooms) appeared in Barcelona, in the first of which, held in 1948, the cohesive
force was the collector Víctor María Imbert. More open than the exhibitions organised by D’Ors, they
were instrumental in supporting young and decidedly reformist plastic artists such as Tàpies o
6. Sánchez Camargo, Manuel: Historia de la Academia Breve
de Crítica de Arte. Homenaje a Eugenio D’Ors. Madrid, García
Langa, 1963.