10th to 27th of November 2016
La Movida Madrileña 75/85 exhibition
Red Gallery, London
The exhibition includes photographs by Miguel Trillo, magazines, posters, videos and an exclusive screening of ‘A Freer Time Was Had By All ‘documentary by Beatriz Alonso Aranzábal.
“It’s difficult to speak of La Movida and explain it to those who didn’t live those years. We weren’t a generation; we weren’t an artistic movement; we weren’t a group with a concrete ideology. We were simply a bunch of people that coincided in one of the most explosive moments in the country.” ‐ Pedro Almodóvar
Continuing with Red Gallery LDN series of exhibitions on Youth Sub cultures around the world, this time its Spain and the city of Madrid and the momentous youth movement called “La Movida”. La Movida was a creative, cross-discipline, counter-cultural movement that took over a neglected Spanish society between the late 1970’s to the mid 1980’s.
Simmering beneath Franco’s Spain, a dictatorship that had ruled over the country for decades, La Movida was an outburst of creative expression that shaped the period of transition from a nation repressed under Franco, to an emerging, free thinking, more liberally minded Spain. With the death of the dictator, these musicians and artists were able to freely express and document a very different Spain to the one being portrayed in the mainstream. Whilst music was its main form of expression, all art forms were used to explore the marginalised as in: pornography, prostitution, gender roles and homosexuality.
La Movida’s favourite son is Pedro Almodóvar, whose first films such as “Pepi, Luci, Bom y Otras Chicas del Monton” (1980) reflect the spirit of the movement. Other notable film directors of the time were: Fernando Trueba, Fernando Colomo and Iván Zulueta.
La Movida’s preferred place to hangout was the Malasaña area of Madrid. Young people would meet in the Rock Ola (a temple of the Movida Movement). El Sol, La Vía Lactea, Carolina y La Penta, venues where you could hear live music & dj’s playing the latest sounds. Short films and paintings were projected onto the walls. The attitude and focus of the music were similar to the British New Wave or the Neue Deitsche Welle in that it mixed styles such as punk with rock as well as having strong influences from synthetic pop.
The London La Movida exhibition has already secured one of the most Influential photographers of the time, Miguel Trillo who captured some of the most iconic and timeless images of the Movida. Red Gallery continues its journey of documenting and archiving other seminal musical movements, such as the Paris Techno scene, Italo Disco and the counterculture in the ex Soviet Union.
This exhibition and project is jointly produced and curated by Red Gallery and Miguel Borrego, Instituto Cervantes London and Spanish Embassy.
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Opening night Wed 9th of #November w/ a special screening plus Q&A – Entry by invite or for free guestlist register via Eventbrite >>> http://bit.ly/2eUKHrD
Open to the public from 10th to 27th of November 2016
All info from Red Gallery.