The Council of Ministers has agreed to acquire the Lafuente Archive to form part of the Reina Sofía Museum collection. The amount of the purchase is 29.795.045,21 eurosto be paid in once annuities (until 2032). Tomorrow, July 27, at 11:00 a.m., in the room of the Lafuente group headquarters in Heras (Cantabria), where part of the collections are provisionally deposited, the director of the Reina Sofía Museum, Manuel Borja-Villel, and the collector José María Lafuente – accompanied by the general secretary of Culture and Sports, Víctor Francos, and the mayor of Santander, Gema Igual- will sign the sales contract.
The Archivo Lafuente is an archive of archives, a collection of contemporary art collections specializing in the history of 20th-century art in Latin America, the United States, and Europe, with a particular emphasis on Spain. The collection consists of around 130,000 pieces and covers multiple formats: photographs, correspondence, manuscripts, manifestos, books, comics, magazines, newspapers, posters, drawings, prints or graphic art, works of art… Also other types of materials and formats that are not as usual, such as artist’s books, photobooks, projects prints and/or manuscripts of conceptual works, documentation of performances, actions and live arts, book-objects, assembled magazines, fanzines, graphic design drafts and mock-ups, mail art pieces, works of experimental poetry/literature, and originals of comic.
The Lafuente Archive collections are particularly exhaustive and unique in a number of areas: futurism, Dadaism and surrealism, Russian avant-garde and Soviet artistic production, the typographic revolution of the early 20th century and, especially relevantly, in the artistic production networks of the second half of the 20th century: experimental writing and poetry (in the broadest sense of the term), artist publications, and mail art.
The structure of the Lafuente Archive is chronological and geographical, distinguishing two large periods, a first that goes from 1900 to 1945 and a second that covers the year 1945 to 1989. The international networks after the Second World War are represented in practically their entire extension in Europe (especially Spain and Italy), the United States and all of Latin America, with unique collections from artists such as Sol LeWitt, Ulises Carrión, Ray Johnson, Gianni Bertini, José Luis Castillejo, Henri Chopin, Edgardo Antonio Vigo, George Maciunas or Marcel Broodthaers.
It is considered that the Lafuente Archive is only comparable to two of the most important private collections in the United States and Europe: the Merrill C. Berman Collection and the Edigio Marzona Collection, with which it has maintained points of affinity. This archive is unique for the representation of the Spanish counterculture and comics of the 1970s and 1980s, with unique collections of publications and authors: ‘Ajoblanco’ magazine, ‘Star’ magazine, Nazario, El Cubri, Ceesepe, etc.
Center in Santander
The collection, which is currently in Cantabria, will remain in a center associated with the Reina Sofía Museum in Santander, whose works have already begun in the former headquarters of the Bank of Spain by the Santander City Council. One of the aims of the Reina Sofía Museum is to promote public knowledge and access to modern and contemporary art in its various manifestations and to promote social communication in plastic arts, photography, and audiovisuals, to guarantee the protection, conservation and restoration, and to promote the enrichment and improvement of movable and immovable property of historical value that make up its heritage.
In March, the Board of Qualification, Valuation and Export of Historical Heritage Goods reported favorably on the acquisition of the Lafuente Archive by the Ministry of Culture and Sports. Then, iceta highlighted the “titanic effort» that it has cost to raise this file: «The will of the Lafuente legacy is clear, that of the Reina Sofía is clear and the Board has expressed its favor». Then, he clarified that Culture will not pay all of what this file costs: «We do not pay everything, if we had to pay what those 130,000 pieces are worth, there would be no money in the General State Budgets. I want to thank Mr. Lafuente for his willingness, because they want the things they have been collecting to be available to people. We owe this to the interest of a collector who was obsessed with not losing that collection.
The Reina Sofía has benefited in the budgets for this year with an increase of 4 million euros for the acquisition of works of art. Part of this endowment will go to the purchase of those documents that make up, in the words of its director, Manuel Borja-Villelone of the most important private collections in Europe.
A Lassalle project
With the acquisition of these assets, the Reina Sofía would conclude an operation that has been brewing since 2014when Jose Maria Lassalle, then Secretary of State for Culture, agreed to preserve and exhibit all of Lafuente’s material in a branch of the Reina Sofía in Santander. Lafuente promised to lend his file in exchange for it being guarded at the former headquarters of the Bank of Spain, in the Cantabrian capital.
The total cost of the rehabilitation and adaptation of the building, which has been taken over by the Cantabrian government, amounts to €10 million. The opening of the new house of the Lafuente Archive was scheduled for 2021, but after some delays it will not be ready before the end of 2023. It will have an area for exhibitions and another for research and consultation, in addition to other areas dedicated to offices, cataloging , reception or restoration.
From cheese entrepreneur to publisher and collector
The Cantabrian businessman of Galician origin José María Lafuente (Lugo, 1957) For decades, he has been developing his professional activity in Cantabria through Lafuente cheese factory, which was started by his father and has grown to become a Mercadona supplier in recent years. In 2015 he acquired Central Cheese Montesinos, a factory located in Jumilla (Murcia). Another of his passions is art. He has treasured works by Spanish painters and sculptors to whom he later adds pieces by international artists. Around the year 2002, he reoriented his vocation as a collector towards documentary collections and promoted the birth of his archive, key in this regard being the acquisition of the legacies of two relevant names in Spanish culture in the second half of the century: the critic of art Miguel Logroño and the writer, professor and editor Pablo Beltrán de Heredia. In 2004 he obtained a copy of the Dada magazine ‘Cabaret Voltaire’, thus beginning the determined international vocation of the Lafuente Archive. In 2009 founds La Bahía Editions, editorial label of the Lafuente Archive, with the purpose of disseminating the studies on documentary and artistic collections of the Archive. In 2012 acquires the magazine ‘Arte y Parte’, of which 25 numbers are published until the end of 2016. Ediciones La Bahía has also promoted other publishing projects such as ‘El Estado Mental’. In 2014, the Lafuente Archive was integrated into the Lafuente Group, whose owners are the brothers José María and Manuela Lafuente Llano.