Gonzalo Elvira.
The Ibizan Series

The starting point for this exhibition project is the period spent by Walter Benjamin on the island of Ibiza, in 1932–1933. For various reasons, both of a personal nature and in relation to his literary production, they were decisive years in the life of the German philosopher and literary critic. In turn, it was an especially relevant period historically in the German and European context, leading to dramatic consequences with the rise to power of the Nazi regime in 1933.

Through his habitual drawing-based practice, Gonzalo Elvira engages and recreates various chapters of Benjamin’s stay on Ibiza, drawing on historical photographs and works of art, as well as other documents related to Benjamin’s life. Benjamin’s own writing, and especially the texts that the German writer wrote in Ibiza, as well as the historical essay Experiencia y pobreza. Walter Benjamin en Ibiza [Experience and Poverty: Walter Benjamin in Ibiza], by Balearic writer Vicente Valero, are Elvira’s reference points as he elaborates this illustrated narrative.

The repertory of images included in the exhibition encompass scenes that are both real and possible, portraits of Benjamin himself, book covers, other portraits of people related to Benjamin’s biography and various historical figures of the time, as well as images related to designs and graphic structures conceived by Elvira. The exhibition also features an animated video recording, based on a hypothetical encounter between Walter Benjamin and dictator Francisco Franco.

The layout in the museum’s Exhibition Hall D doubles up the collection of drawings on the walls, presenting them both inside the gallery and outside of it. This is facilitated in turn by a series of vitrines, functioning also as desks, which allow us to take our time reading, as if we were in a “possible” library, revisiting it in the present-day. It also stimulates us to delve more deeply into the German writer from a new narrative subjectivity.

Gonzalo Elvira is an Argentine artist who has resided in Spain since 2000. Since the mid-1990s, his practice has sought to uncover and reveal new perspectives on various episodes in the political and social history of the twentieth century, with particular concern for certain chapters in the history of critical art, and for various communitarian movements, which were determinant milestones for the transformation of thought. His particular working method, based on drawing, is focused on creating new narratives about moments and individuals on the margins of official history, illuminating their paths in a contemporary context that tends to forget and occult the past from totalitarian points of view.

Some of Elvira’s most important recent projects are “Leer el sueño” [Reading Sleep] (CAB, Burgos, 2022), “Los primeros fríos” [First Cold Snaps] (Centro Botín, Santander, 2022), “12 canciones concretas” [12 Concrete Songs] (Rodríguez Gallery, Poznań, 2018), “Proyecto S.R.” [S. R. Project] (La Virreina, Barcelona, 2017), as well as “Assaig S.T. 1909-1919” [S. T. Essay 1909–1919] and “Bauhaus 1919, modelo para armar” [Bauhaus 1919, To Be Assembled], both of which were carried out in various galleries and art institutions from 2012 to 2015.