Jacques Hachuel Collection

Interview with Jacques Hachuel

SUZANNE L. STRATTON

Both Jacques and Hachuel will strike North Americans as unusual names for someone from Madrid. Would you introduce yourself by telling us something about your background?

All right. It’s tough, at least for me, to handle the kind of life-sketch I think you’re asking for, but I’ll be very glad to try.

I was born into a Jewish family. It was the beginning of the 1930’s and Tangier then had a special political status and so was open to all and everything. My father who is Argentine, was especially concerned that I get an education that would be more than a compendium of useful bits of knowledge needed to be successful in a life that’s measured, nearly always, by money. As a matter of fact, the musical intuition of my grandmother Sol, who use to sing –and quite well- her favorite operatic arias, was also part of a whole mood that I remember with a great deal of tenderness, and that began, I guess, to seep into my very first perceptions of life when I was still very tiny. I think my passion for music heated up in that atmosphere that we lived in at home.

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Introduction

CARMEN GIMENEZ

After the long night of Franquismo, which kept the country closed up unto itself, the new democratic Spain has eagerly opened itself not just to the outside generally, but to current culture, which is what gives real meaning to relations among peoples. In this sense, I was fortunate to be able to verify directly, during the period when I held the position of Director of the National Exhibition Center of the Ministry of Culture (1983-1989), the interest and enthusiasm that the Spanish public has demonstrated for a series of shows of avant-garde art from our century, despite the nearly total lack of previous exhibitions in this field, which was not pleasing to the authorities of the dictatorship, and which, logically, they did not support.

Today, then, we can say that the situation of contemporary art has changed almost completely in Spain, and that its society has become much more receptive, calling for higher standards, better exhibitions, better museums and activities related with today’s artistic creation. One of the most significant and stimulating changes in this field is surely the existence of a vigorous new trend in private collecting, which now, thanks to the initiative of The Spanish Institute of New York, will be the object of a series of monographic shows, beginning with the one now being inaugurated with the title Modern Masterpieces from the Collection of Jacques Hachuel.

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Selection of Works from the Collection