The Museo Vostell Malpartida in the Spanish village

Malpartida de Cáceres Malpartida de Cáceres is a municipality in the province of Cáceres (Spain) with a population of 4368 inhabitants (population figures on 1 January 2004). The urban centre of Malpartida de Cáceres is situated 11 kilometres west from Cáceres cit ...

west of the provincial capital Cáceres in the Autonomous Community of

Extremadura Extremadura (; ext, Estremaúra; pt, Estremadura; Fala: ''Extremaúra'') is an autonomous community of Spain. Its capital city is Mérida, and its largest city is Badajoz. Located in the central-western part of the Iberian Peninsula, it ...

is dedicated to the work of the German painter, sculptor,

Fluxus Fluxus was an international, interdisciplinary community of artists, composers, designers and poets during the 1960s and 1970s who engaged in experimental art performances which emphasized the artistic process over the finished product. Fluxus ...

and Happening artist

Wolf Vostell Wolf Vostell (14 October 1932 – 3 April 1998) was a German painter and sculptor, considered one of the early adopters of video art and installation art and pioneer of Happenings and Fluxus. Techniques such as blurring and Dé-coll/age are c ...

. The museum is under the artistic direction of Mercedes Vostell and under the general direction of José Antonio Agúndez García. The Museo Vostell Malpartida was founded by Wolf Vostell and Mercedes Vostell in 1976.

History

In 1976 Wolf Vostell created a sculpture in Los Barruecos with his automobile, a black

Opel Admiral The Opel Admiral is a luxury car made by the German car manufacturer Opel from 1937 until 1939 and again from 1964 until 1977. Admiral (1937–1939) The first Admiral was introduced early in 1937 at the Berlin Motor Show, although production ...

from 1970 with which he had travelled with his family through Extremadura. The title of the sculpture is ''VOAEX (Journey in the Upper Extremadura)'' and in 1978 he created the sculpture ''The dead who is thirsty (El Muerto que tiene Sed)''. 30 October 1976 was the inauguration of the ''VOAEX'' sculpture and the foundation of the Museo Vostell Malpartida. The floor space of the museum is about 14.000 m². The washhouse was operated in the 18th and 19th centuries; it is an interesting trade in which the wool was washed by the animals of the migratory herds with water from the pond Barruecos de Abajo of Extremadura. The house consists of several rooms in which different activities were carried out: Shearing sheep and weighing. Since 1988 the german Goethe-Institut is collaborating with the museum. The collaboration started when Manuel Heredia (former Head of Technology of the Goethe-Institut Madrid) supported Wolf Vostell in the 1980s in finding the 20 motorcycles of the brand

Sanglas Sanglas was a Spanish motorcycle manufacturer which was founded in Barcelona (Poble Nou) in 1942 and ceased production in 1981. Features Sanglas motorcycles had relatively large engines for their time, especially for Spain. The company was b ...

for Salvador Dalí's sculpture ''The end of the Parzival (El fin de Parzival)''. Since then the Goethe-Institut is part of selected exhibitions, concerts and book releases. In 1994 the government of Extremadura took over the complete renovation of the buildings. After Vostell's death in 1998, Mercedes Vostell became the artistic director of the museum. In 2005 the state government acquired the Vostell-archive for the museum. The Vostell-archive became an integral part of the Museo Vostell Malpartida. It serves art historians, journalists, students and all other people interested in art as a source of information. The Museo Vostell Malpartida had 47,376 visitors in 2016 and was number 10 of 30 must-see museums in Spain, according to the

National Geographic Society The National Geographic Society (NGS), headquartered in Washington, D.C., United States, is one of the largest non-profit scientific and educational organizations in the world. Founded in 1888, its interests include geography, archaeology, an ...

in Spain 2017. The Museo Vostell Malpartida was awarded the Gold Medal of Merit in the Fine Arts in 2018 by the

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Collections and exhibitions

Structure of the museum

The museum consists primarily of four parts. Three parts are permanent exhibitions from the collection of Wolf and Mercedes Vostell, as well as from the collection of the Italian art collector Gino Di Maggio, who specifically collected the art of the Fluxus artists. The third part contains temporary exhibitions of changing

Conceptual art Conceptual art, also referred to as conceptualism, is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic, technical, and material concerns. Some works of conceptual art, sometimes called insta ...

ists. The museum also includes the outdoor exhibition in the nature reserve Los Barruecos. The outdoor exhibition includes the sculptures ''VOAEX'' (1976) and in ''El muerto que tiene Sed'' (1978).

Collection Wolf and Mercedes Vostell

The opening collection Wolf and Mercedes Vostell offers an extensive and varied tour through the selection of cycles by the founding artist. It consists of five works, which make up the special reference of this museum: ''Automobile-Fever (Auto-Fieber)'' (1973), ''Fluxus-Buick-Piano'' (1988)'', Endogene Depression'' (1975–1978), ''Requiem for the forgotten (Réquiem por los olvidados)'' (1986), ''The Breakfast of Leonardo da Vinci in Berlin (Das Frühstück von Leonardo da Vinci in Berlin)'' (1998) WolfVostellCarInConcrete

As objects, most of these parts contain elements of the fetishistic symbolism of the 20th century. To all this belong five sculptures ''The Concrete Bulls (Los Toros de Hormigón)'' (1990), four large reliefs (''Trashumancia'') (1993) and paintings such as ''The Burial of the Sardine (El Entierro de la Sardina)'' (1985), ''The Billard Girls (Las Chicas del Billar'') (1986), ''Mythos Berlin'' (1987) and ''Estrella Seelenfreund'' (1994). In addition, the Wolf and Mercedes Vostell Collection has a large number of paintings like the cycles ''El muerto que tiene Sed'' and ''VOAEX'' and the sculpture projects ''Icarus'' and Tanit'', which attempt to offer a comprehensive tour of a selection of the artist's cycles. Also worth mentioning are the works ''Transmigration III'' (1958–1959), in which a television set is integrated, and ''Foreign mountain'' (Montaña extranjera)'' (1958), with which Wolf Vostell began his production in Extremadura. In the garden of the museum there is a 16-meter high sculpture by Wolf Vostell with the title ''Why did the process between Pilate and Jesus take only two minutes? (Por qué el proceso entre Jesús y Pilatos duró solamente dos minutos?)'' (1996), consisting of the fuselage of a Russian

Mig-21 The Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21 (russian: Микоян и Гуревич МиГ-21; NATO reporting name: Fishbed) is a supersonic jet fighter and interceptor aircraft, designed by the Mikoyan-Gurevich Design Bureau in the Soviet Union. Its nickn ...

airplane, two automobiles, computer monitors and three pianos.

Fluxus Collection

The Fluxus collection was donated to the museum by the Italian art collector ''Gino Di Maggio'' in october 1996. Di Maggio established a personal relationship with the Fluxus artists, took care of their works and exhibited them first in the multipurpose room ''Multhipla'' and later in the ''Mudima Foundation''. The donation consists of a series of works, most of which are Fluxus actions and interventions, so that the Photographs, videos, manifestos and various texts are the necessary additions to these bundles of files. The exhibition comprises 250 works, installations, Paintings and Sculptures by 31 artists of European, North American and Asian origin who, since the late 1950s and 1960s, have synthesized the upheavals in all areas of culture in the Happening and Fluxus movements in favour of a renewal of the artistic field in an interdisciplinary and intermediary manner, transcending everyday life and as the seed of a fundamental social transformation.

Fluxus artists within the collection

Eric Andersen Eric Andersen (born February 14, 1943) is an American folk music singer-songwriter, who has written songs recorded by Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, Judy Collins, Linda Ronstadt, the Grateful Dead and many others. Early in his career, in the 1960s, ...

* Ay-O *

George Brecht George Brecht (August 27, 1926 – December 5, 2008), born George Ellis MacDiarmid, was an American conceptual artist and avant-garde composer, as well as a professional chemist who worked as a consultant for companies including Pfizer, Johnson ...

* Giuseppe Chiari *

Philip Corner Philip Lionel Corner (born April 10, 1933; name sometimes given as Phil Corner) is an American composer, trombonist, alphornist, vocalist, pianist, music theorist, music educator, and visual artist. Biography After The High School of Music & Ar ...

Willem de Ridder Willem de Ridder ('s-Hertogenbosch 14 October 1939 – 29 December 2022) was a Dutch anarchist and artist, known as a founder of Fluxus. He was the foremost Fluxus member in the Netherlands. He showed and sold Fluxus works in his gallery, Amst ...

Robert Filliou Robert Filliou (17 January 1926 – 2 December 1987) was a French artist associated with Fluxus, who produced works as a filmmaker, "action poet," sculptor, and happenings maestro. Life In 1943, Filliou became a member of the French Communi ...

* Henry Flynt *

Al Hansen Alfred Earl "Al" Hansen (5 October 1927 – 20 June 1995) was an American artist. He was a member of Fluxus, a movement that originated on an artists' collective around George Maciunas. He was the father of Andy Warhol protégé Bibbe Hans ...

* Geoffrey Hendricks *

Dick Higgins Dick Higgins (15 March 1938 – 25 October 1998) was an American artist, composer, art theorist, poet, publisher, printmaker, and a co-founder of the Fluxus international artistic movement (and community). Inspired by John Cage, Higgins was an ...

* Joe Jones *

Allan Kaprow Allan Kaprow (August 23, 1927 – April 5, 2006) was an American painter, assemblagist and a pioneer in establishing the concepts of performance art. He helped to develop the " Environment" and " Happening" in the late 1950s and 1960s, as well ...

* Milan Knížák *

Alison Knowles Alison Knowles (born 1933) is an American visual artist known for her installations, performances, soundworks, and publications. Knowles was a founding member of the Fluxus movement, an international network of artists who aspired to merge diff ...

Shigeko Kubota (2 August 1937 – 23 July 2015) was a Japanese video artist, sculptor and avant-garde performance artist, who mostly lived in New York City. She was one of the first artists to adopt the portable video camera Sony Portapak in 1970, likening it ...

Jean-Jacques Lebel Jean-Jacques Lebel (born in Paris on June 30, 1936) is a French artist. His father was also a poet, translator, poetry publisher, political activist, art collector, and art historian. Besides his heterogeneous artworks and poetry, Lebel is also k ...

George Maciunas George Maciunas (; lt, Jurgis Mačiūnas; November 8, 1931 – May 9, 1978) was a Lithuanian American artist, born in Kaunas. A founding member and the central coordinator of Fluxus, an international community of artists, architects, composers ...

Walter Marchetti Walter may refer to: People * Walter (name), both a surname and a given name * Little Walter, American blues harmonica player Marion Walter Jacobs (1930–1968) * Gunther (wrestler), Austrian professional wrestler and trainer Walter Hahn (born 19 ...

Charlotte Moorman Madeline Charlotte Moorman (November 18, 1933 – November 8, 1991) was an American cellist, performance artist, and advocate for avant-garde music. Referred to as the "Jeanne d'Arc of new music", she was the founder of the Annual Avant Garde Fes ...

Yoko Ono Yoko Ono ( ; ja, 小野洋子, Ono Yōko, usually spelled in katakana ; born February 18, 1933) is a Japanese multimedia artist, singer, songwriter, and peace activist. Her work also encompasses performance art and filmmaking. Ono grew up i ...

Nam June Paik Nam June Paik (; July 20, 1932 – January 29, 2006) was a Korean American artist. He worked with a variety of media and is considered to be the founder of video art. He is credited with the first use (1974) of the term "electronic super h ...

* Benjamin Patterson *

Takako Saito is a Japanese artist closely associated with Fluxus, the international collective of avant-garde artists that was active primarily in the 1960s and 1970s. Saito contributed a number of performances and artworks to the movement, which continu ...

* Antonio Saura *

Mieko Shiomi was a Japanese amateur photographer in Shōwa era Japan. Life Shiomi was born in Osaka, and graduated from Shimizudani Girls' High School in 1927 (Shōwa 2). Shiomi joined the Tampei Photography Club in 1948, and thereafter joined two other ...

* Gianni-Emilio Simonetti *

Daniel Spoerri Daniel Spoerri (born 27 March 1930) is a Swiss artist and writer born in Romania. Spoerri is best known for his "snare-pictures," a type of assemblage or object art, in which he captures a group of objects, such as the remains of meals eaten by in ...

Ben Vautier Ben Vautier, also known simply as Ben (born 18 July 1935 in Naples, Italy), is a French artist. Vautier lives and works in Nice, where he ran a record shop called ''Magazin'' between 1958 and 1973. Biography Benjamin Vautier was born on 18 Ju ...

Robert Watts Robert Watts (born 23 May 1938)Adam Pirani, ''Robert Watts: Secrets of "The Temple of Doom"'', Starlog #94, April 1985, pp 23–26,62. is a British retired film producer who is best known for his involvement with the ''Star Wars'' and ''Indiana ...

Emmett Williams Emmett Williams (4 April 1925 – 14 February 2007) was an American poet and visual artist. He was married to British visual artist Ann Noël. Williams was born in Greenville, South Carolina, grew up in Virginia, and lived in Europe from 1 ...

Movies

* 1976: ''VOAEX,'' by

Ulrike Ottinger Ulrike Ottinger (born 6 June 1942) is a German filmmaker and photographer. Early life From 1959 she was a visiting student at the Academy of Arts in Munich and worked as a painter. Her mother, Maria Weinberg, was a journalist and her father, Ul ...

. * 1982: ''Wolf Vostell – Mitten am Rande der Welt'', (part 1
part 2
by

Jürgen Böttcher Jürgen Böttcher (pseudonym Strawalde, born 8 July 1931) is a German film director and painter. He is best known for his film '' Born in '45''. See also * A. R. Penck Ralf Winkler, alias A. R. Penck, who also used the pseudonyms ''M ...

. * 1994: ''Traumziele, Zwischen Berlin und Malpartida – auf den Spuren von Wolf Vostell'', by Werner Filmer y Ernst – Michael Wingens. * 2015: ''Malpartida Fluxus Village'', de María Pérez. * 2016: Documentary, by Jesús Alonso Ovejero for

RTVE The Corporación de Radio y Televisión Española, S.A. (; ), known as Radiotelevisión Española or RTVE, is the state-owned public corporation that assumed in 2007 the indirect management of the Spanish public radio and television service know ...

External links

Homepage Museo Vostell Malpartida

References

{{Authority control Museo Vostell Malpartida Art museums established in 1976 Museo Vostell Malpartida Art museums and galleries in Spain Biographical museums in Spain Modern art museums Cultural centers in Spain Buildings and structures in the Province of Cáceres Museums in Extremadura Vostell