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DARRO, DESIGN OR ART (1959-1979)
DARRO, DESIGN OR ART
(1959-1979)
MADRID
CULTURAL CENTER
FEB 01 2019 - MAR 10 2019
When Paco Muñoz founded Darro in 1959, the outlook in that post-war Spain was bleak. He revolutionized the design world of 1950s Madrid. The city was slowly starting accept the avant-garde designs appearing in certain stores thanks to the furniture Darro and his team of frontward facing architects such as Javier Carvajal, Miguel Fisac or Equipo 57.
The store, a benchmark in the capital in the 1950s and 1960s, served as a showcase for the new artistic and decorative trends that were beginning to arrive in Spain, from 1962 the store was also an art gallery, and was filled with a selection of Nordic designs as well as works from the Italian firm Arflex that gave the space an air of exclusivity and modernity.
"When Paco Muñoz founded Darro in 1959, the outlook in that post-war Spain was bleak. He revolutionized the design world of 1950s Madrid"
To demonstrate the increasing importance Darro has in the history fo Spanish design, the Machado-Muñoz gallery, recovered 60 of his pieces, of which certain pieces such as, the beautiful Riaza chair (made of Spanish walnut wood and leather), are now categorized as icons of Spanish design.
The firm was unfortunately closed in the late 70s due to problems with exporting and other reasons. The legacy of Darro is uncontestable and was in shown in all its splendor at the exhibition hall of the Fernán Gómez Cultural Center, in Plaza de Colón.
Miguel Fisac is the most important and internationally recognized Spanish architect of the second half of the twentieth century. His work is of most significance when considering the modern architectural movement in Spain of the said period. As Fisac's work becomes more recognized, his role in understanding the modern architectural movement in Spain has become increasingly apparent. His work is fundamental and the most coherent of his era.
Fisac came from the Manchego rural environment of Daimiel (Royal City), born in 1913. He traveled from a young age, accumulating a broad view of the European, Nordic, and American avant-gardes and the Far East and North Africa. His unassuming architecture reflects this universal education, where constructive invention joins rationality in approach and an expressive intuition dominated by space versus form.
Fisac's work encompasses buildings, urbanism, furniture and object creation, industrial design, and painting. In the four decades, from the beginning of the forties till the eighties, he produced his most acclaimed works, which are grouped into stages: firstly in 1942, he worked in the style of abstract classicism, which in the fifties modernized towards an organicism dominated by the presence of brick, a material practically abandoned to concrete. He used walls structurally, the invention of prefabricated concrete textures with flexible frameworks, a theme that directed his work in the late 1980s.
He continued working through till his death in 2006, but more sporadically, conjoining new architecture with rehabilitation, writing, and conferences and exhibitions about his work activities. In 1994 he won the Gold Medal for Architecture, and in 2003 won the National Architecture Prize.