The relations between France and Spain resulted in a strong surrealist imprint in our country, which would extend over time and would walk along with other trends until the middle of the twentieth century. Once again, we realise how inappropriate it is to think of contemporary art as a linear succession of styles. The ‘new realism’ of Arturo Souto or Joaquín Peinado coexists with the surrealist influence in the works of Julio González and Alberto Sánchez or in the more informalist works of Tàpies and Chillida.

Over the years, the boundary between artistic genres became blurred in a creative universe that mixed drawing with painting, sculpture with action and architecture. An example of this attitude is offered by Eduardo Chillida's drawing in the exhibition: it is difficult to establish a solution of continuity between sculpture, relief, collage and drawing. The texture and chromaticism of the fragments of paper evoke the visual qualities of iron and wood, but the drawing is present in the white of the paper, itself empty in the face of a paradoxically flat mass. The traditional conception of the hand that draws has been replaced by a hand that cuts, composes, pastes... The collection has led us to a different perspective: not the traditional drawing, now a work in which the drawing participates.