Elena Asins in Alicante

Installation view of Elena Asins: The Sound of the Wind is an Indefatigable Whistle, Alicante, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Alicante – MACA, February – May, 2023. Image courtesy of MACA, Alicante, Spain.

In 2019, the Robledo-Palop Collection signed an agreement with the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Alicante (MACA) facilitating the long-term loan of five drawings and one iron sculpture by Spanish artist Elena Asins (1940-2015). This partnership was further enhanced in 2023 with the addition of another major drawing, Canons from 1990. Asins, one of the most prominently featured artists in the Robledo-Palop Collection, significantly contributes to expanding MACA's holdings. The foundational collection of MACA is the personal collection of artist Eusebio Sempere (1923-1985), which included one drawing and a piece of visual poetry by Asins. With the long-term loans from the Robledo-Palop Collection, Alicante now boasts one of the most comprehensive collections of Asins' work, second only to the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid.

In 2023, our seven works by Elena Asins were featured in a groundbreaking exhibition curated by MACA’s Chief Curator, Rosa M. Castells. Titled Elena Asins: The Sound of the Wind is an Indefatigable Whistle, the exhibition spanned five decades of Asins’ work, from her initial exploration of abstraction and visual poetry to her later series fully executed with computers. As a pioneer of geometric abstraction and conceptualism in the 1960s, Asins played a crucial role in bridging theoretical computer science with the minimal and geometrical tendencies of her time.

The exhibition drew from the collections of Museo Reina Sofía, MACA, and private collections from Spain and the United States such as the Robledo-Palop Collection, bringing attention to overlooked works and contextual relationships. The first section presented early works linked to the experimental circles that emerged in Spain during the final decades of the Francoist dictatorship, where avant-garde groups combined fine arts with poetry, linguistics, music, and architecture. Another section focused on Asins’ years at the Centro de Cálculo of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, where she created her first computational works and collaborated with artists such as Eusebio Sempere and Abel Martin, whose works form the foundation of this museum. Following her time in Spain, Asins continued her research and collaborations with intellectuals like Max Bense and Noam Chomsky at institutions such as the University of Stuttgart, Columbia University, and the New School for Social Research in New York. This section of the exhibition included works from the series Quartetos Prusianos, Scalae, Canons, and Menhires, showcasing the mathematical beauty, delicacy, and precision of her artistic language.

This exhibition provided an excellent opportunity to revisit and celebrate the work of Elena Asins. The words and onomatopoeias in her visual poetry from the 1960s, along with the music of Mozart and Bach that permeates her later visual compositions, broke the silence that has often overshadowed the career and legacy of this crucial 20th-century artist.