BARCELONA.- A total of 42 engravings by, among others, Antoni Tapies, Robert Motherwell, Eduardo Chillida, Edward Ruscha and Jaume Plensa, form a journey through contemporary engraving that CaixaForum has gathered in an exhibition titled, "Sign, space, time".

The show, which opened in Barcelona, gathers works of art created between 1970 and 1990, where it will be on view until March 15.

The curator of the exhibition, engraver and teacher from the Universitat de Barcelona Antonia Vila, has presented a selection that gathers engravings that, in many cases, were the starting point of works of art that artists materialized in other formats.

For this reason, Vila considers that paper is the most “liberal” medium in which these artists have exploited their imagination because in it they are willing to experiment.

The works of art are owned by La Caixa, which has a collection of over 4.400 pieces made by important artists and that also includes the proofs that the foundation bought in 1995 from the owner of Ediciones Poligrafa, Manuel de Muga.

Since then, some selections from the collection have been shown in several Spanish cities, but until now had never before been seen in Barcelona.

The exhibition, "Sign, space, time" which has been organized for the first time, and the 42 engravings from which it is formed have been selected by Antonia Vila following certain complex criteria taking into consideration the technique used, as well as the notoriety of the works.

The common thread of the selected pieces is the sum between sign, space and time, three essential concepts in the world of engraving which pretends to offer an educational function of this type of art through "one of the most democratic formats", paper.

One of the common characteristics in all the engravings exhibited is the use of modern techniques (all of the works of art were made between 1970 and 1990) and all of the artists "looked for a lexicon that translated what they studied for the media with which they were used to working with".

The majority of the pieces exhibited are the first units of some pieces which had, on some occasions, up to 70 units engraved.

The works from the collection dedicated to "Space" gather hyperrealistic aesthetics which vindicate the importance of the landscape as well as the white spaces that emphasize the route of the lines, and its authors are: Erwin Bechtord, Josep Guinovart, Eduardo Chillida, Juan Hernandez Pijuan and Albert Rafols-Casamada.

The conceptual metaphors are the protagonists of the selection gathered for the section titled "Time" and these were elaborated by Edward Ruscha, Jaume Plensa, Juan Hernandez Pijuan and Joan Rabascall.

John Cage, Zush, Robert Motherwell and Antoni Tapies are the authors of the engravings dedicated to "Sign", in a space characterized by experimenting with language.

The result is an "intimate" exhibition, according to Vila, in which the goal is that "the spectator will observe and enjoy all of the details" of the different techniques used.