Page 11 - Fernando Sinaga. Ideas K

One of the primary functions of museums and art centres is to promote actions and careers which have progressively grown in importance in their own right over time during the course of many years of professional efforts. In the case at hand, the museum serves as a showcase for, and clearly stresses, the importance of the work of an artist with respect to both research and artistic innovations and context. Context is a key to under- standing the closest realities that surround us, their changes and their processes. It is also the origin or point of departure of the output of some artists, whereas in others—as in Sinaga’s case—the process is exactly the opposite, and it is the artists who deposit all their experience and background in the context.
My personal interest in Fernando Sinaga’s work is not limited to the context of Castile and León—where he has lived and pursued much of his career—but goes back to earlier times and much broader geographical areas. Long before working for the institution I now direct, I carried out major research centred on the 1980s and 1990s, especially on sculpture in Spain, where important artists began to forge their career paths firmly and with repercus- sions: from the ideas of the young Basque sculpture of Txomin Badiola, Pello Irazu, Ángel Bados, Juan Luis Moraza and Luisa Fernández to the powerful pieces by female artists such as Susana Solano, Ángeles Marcos and Cristina Iglesias, to the matchless lyricism
of Juan Muñoz, to Sergi Aguilar, and finally to Jaume Plensa, Toni Abad, Jordi Colomer and so many other sculptors and artists who, starting from their relationship with their close environment but gradually, also with the international context, marked and gave substance to a movement and an era. It is from this internationalisation, from this broad- ening of personal, social, conceptual, material, geographical and, accordingly, contextual frameworks that Sinaga’s work emerges and draws its strength. His theories on the post- minimal and chromatism in his work have led me to explore every project of his since the legendary El Desayuno Alemán (The German Breakfast) (1985), which is the starting point of the exhibition at the MUSAC that is the basis of the survey of his work.
Returning to context, and in a framework closer to home, it should not be forgotten that Sinaga, although Aragonese by birth and a representative of an interesting generation
of sculptors who attracted international attention—recall the exhibition Three Spanish Sculptors: Cristina Iglesias, Pello Irazu, Fernando Sinaga held at the Donald Young Gallery in Chicago (1988)—performs important work in Castilla y León, where he has lived and worked for more than thirty years. His friendship and close contact with the representa- tives of what was the most contemporary and important group in this part of the country, A UA CRAG, together with his research and teaching work at Salamanca as Professor of Sculpture, make Sinaga’s oeuvre all the more important in the art world if such a thing
is possible. His theoretical and critical writings and his relationship with different artists’ associations also evidence his nature as a genuine activist and his great respect for the work of the artist as a professional. All this makes Sinaga an emblematic figure at the MUSAC, a public and regional museum of Castile and León which, as part of its primary
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