Galería Cadaqués (1973-1997)

The Cadaqués gallery was founded in 1973 by architect Lanfranco Bombelli and specialised in graphic work. For its foundation, Bombelli used his close relationship with artists linked to Concrete Art, especially Max Bill, whom he knew from his student years in Zurich and with whom he had worked as an architect. Added to this line of concrete art, present until the gallery closes in 1997, is Pop Art, given the friendly and professional relationship as an architect between Bombelli and Richard Hamilton, the British initiator of Pop Art who, following in the footsteps of Marcel Duchamp, had set up his second home in Cadaques. In this way Bombelli begins to exhibit artists close to this movement, like Jasper Johns, Fran Stella and Equipo Crónica.

But it is Hamilton’s exhibitions along with Dieter Roth, especially with Collaborations (1976) and Interfaces (1977), which achieve the greatest impact and which toured throughout Spain and Europe, with which both artists did solo exhibitions and for which the gallery edited a series about under the logo Richard (Hamilton 1975) and Tibidabo (Dieter Roth 1977). They were the first exhibitions in Spain of these artists as well as many others, among them Duchamp (1979) and Bill (1979).

Besides the three central lines -Concrete, Pop and Conceptual art- numerous veteran artists approached the gallery in Cadaques. With them Bombelli made editions and multiples, where he was also a pioneer. Cosmopolitan, collector and artist, Bombelli also collaborated with the launching of ARCO and with various galleries, such as Vandrés, Eude, Grupo Quince, Juana de Aizpuru, Maeght and international centres to tour his exhibitions, like the ICA London or Kunsthalle Bielefeld.

The gallery, located in a small and peripheral town to the Spanish cultural centres, although artistically relevant since the nineteenth century (especially associated with Salvador Dalí and Duchamp), and with a seasonal population of amateur and professional art fans, also promoted parallel pioneering activities such as exhibitions on photography; architecture; furniture; fashion; concerts, among them one with John Cage; or actions of conceptual artists who would have found it hard to be given a place in a gallery at that time.