Exhibitions
The Portera archive, the protagonist of the Juan March Palma Foundation
Alberto Portera was an important and distinguished Aragonese neurologist and academic, but in addition to his medical career, he was passionate about art and cinema, a friend of many artists, creating films while creating their works. This has given rise to the Portera Archive exhibition at the Juan March Foundation in Palma, a tour open until October 11.
The focus should be on the 1960s and 1980s, when Alberto Portera created Super-8 films of artist and intellectual friends, a circle that included renowned artists such as José Guerrero, Asger Jorn, Antonio Saura, and Manolo Millares. These films, for the most part unpublished, are now part of the Portera archive's exhibition core at the Juan March Foundation.
Alberto Portera. Still from the film Millares 1972 (1972) © Manolo Millares, VEGAP, Madrid, 2024
The museum tour includes artworks from the Portera collection, as well as interviews and writings. Alberto Portera was a close friend of Antonio and Carlos Saura, as well as Eduardo Chillida and Miguel Labordeta. Portera passed away in 2019, leaving behind important films and works of art; however, the March Foundation has reviewed and created a selection to create a tour filled with moments, names, and details.
Alberto Portera will take the viewer through the workshops of Martín Chirino, the Guerrero Festival in New York, Asger Jorn working in Saura's studio in Madrid, and Manuel H. Mompó with his works at the 1968 Venice Biennale and at the Rastro flea market in the Spanish capital. Now, a spectacular legacy of incalculable artistic and scientific value is being uncovered. The temporary exhibition first stopped at the Museum of Spanish Abstract Art in Cuenca, and from June 3 to October 11, the Juan March Foundation in Palma will host this unveiled legacy.
José Guerrero, Holiday, © José Guerrero, VEGAP, Madrid, 2024
The exhibition thus becomes a testament to the public context of art in Spain during more than three decades of the 20th century. It is a visual record in which Portera captured some of the most relevant Spanish artists of the time working in their studios. The Portera Archive brings together 19 films. "Some films are more documentary and cinema verité than others, which are more authorial and scripted, such as those dedicated to Millares, Guerrero, or Antonio Fernández Alba. There is no editing in any of them, and music in only one," explains Manuel Fontán del Junco.
Archive of the March Foundation's Porter in Palma
