I am hard-pressed to explain or to try and understand the creative process which has led me, from 1957 to 2000 - the present - to compose the Documentos Básicos. The corpus of the work is currently comprised of 1,800 documents, divided into pieces-paintings, made up of between 1 and 6 photographs each. They, in turn, are grouped by years and techniques, and divided into black and white or colour. AII of this has been clearly catalogued and reviewed in this publication, which the CGAC and its director Miguel Fernández- Cid, have been generous enough to compile for the first exhibition and catalogue, including most of these works.
I have shown tiny groups of these 1,800 documents, but never has there been an all-encompassing solo show including only these works.
I say that it is difficult to explain oneself, but, actually, since this work is something of a personal diary covering 43 years of my career, it is nothing more than the materialisation of a hidden part of the reality which has driven my spirit and my retina, becoming, over the years, more universal and varied. There are images of daily life which I either sought out or happened upon, but in all cases they were chosen. In some ways, it is a mystery which perhaps only I can understand, something belonging to my secret world - why I have chosen these icons and not others waiting to be rescued from my inner self in new, future documents and what it is that drives me to select some images, while rejecting others. As this work is prodigious in both Quantity and space, it is important to bear in mind that it is in constant progression.
In order to be able to grasp the basis of this work, we must go back in time to the end of the fifties.
At that time ,I felt the need and the obligation to make a radical statement against the art style that preceded my generation: Pop Art.
As I already knew, this movement, which is based on the dissemination of the image of consumerism, loomed like an empty spiritual monster, a testimony to the American capitalist society - images of the consumer society that I personally experienced in the USA were invading the art galleries. It was as if the neon signs, the adverts and photographs of famous people, that you see in New York, Times Square, had been transferred to the artistic world.
Warhol, Lichtenstein, Wesselmann, Oldenburg were some of the leading artists.
At the time, I was living in Boston, making frequent trips to New York and I realised that human beings sometimes in the most extreme versions, cohabited with the neon plastic aluminium of technology in the Big Apple.
These monsters of publicity - heartless and threatening - presented a double dilemma for me. On the one hand, they devoured the subtle, multiple, and of course, universal spirit of painting and secondly, by using the strategy of photography, they destroyed that emotional quiver, that spiritual vibration, faint or redundant, that lives or has lived in the history of art, that is to say, the history of painting.
So, overwhelmed by the avalanche of consumer images, 1 wanted to recover the spirit of painting. To do this, 1 sought out the most saturated people, the ones at the limit, closest to the edge of the abyss, that 1 could find, to bring them out into the light, using the language of photography as a scalpel or instrument, to show that the picture painted by the most painful or terminal moments is fuIl of emotion, even more so than reality itself. Maybe it was my friend, Alberto Greco, a magnificent creator who is no longer with us, who made me wonder if it wouldn't be more effective to rent a bus, gather the guests at the gallery, and take them on a tour of the hospitals, jails or insane asylums. That surely would have been an attitude of fluxus which had nothing at all to do with my radical spirit of congealment. A ballet, a symphony will undoubtedly arouse eternal transmutations in the spirit, but much less stable than the huge emotional impact a work of art can have. Once a person has seen Las Meninas or El Guernica, these images can never be erased - they are imprinted on the flesh.
Going against the current of fashions, including those wich carne after Fluxus or Duchamp post fluxus, post duchampianas or even arte povera, my great chrysalides began to develop with a second ski n or a plastic bubble. This gave rise to what 1 called Juguetes Patológicos Para Adultos (Pathological Toys for Adults), stiff wrecks, pained or serene in an ambiguous state between levitation or the gallows. This is how my emblems appear, charged with mysticism, if not a Catholic spirit of resurrection and incarnation, if one can use these terms. What are the most famous images? Los Pies, El Enfermo, La Espera, La Espera Blanca, La Oración, El Místico, El Jones... The fact that they were exhibited at the 1970 Venice Biennal in the central gallery of the Spanish pavilion and that they later won a prize at the Bienal de Sáo Paulo, led to the international recognition of my work early in my career. During the seventies and eighties, my work was shown in solo exhibitions at most of the museums in Europe and the USA.
These first images were distressing for me to find, since I was on the lookout for what was, as I said, on the edge, if not on the pathological side, - what my spirit craved.
Over the years my visual promiscuity has grown, becoming almost lustful - I may be moved by a head of hair or the nape of a neck, a landscape, faces, mist, contrasts, fusions, etc., all impregnated with emotion for me - and what lies behind the picture.
AII of this has made my work more and more spontaneous, instead of seeking out situations,I1 jet myself go with the flow - with what stirs me. There are blurred images and brusque divisions with flaming colours, and the most exhilarating challenge of hitting upon an equilibrium between reflection and chance, which sometimes makes the picture disappear completely.
The German artist Gerhard Richter has done something similar and at the same time with his Atlas, but although I must confess that this coincidence does not please me in the least, after any analysis, however superficial, it is obvious that the spirit and intentions of the two works, are not just different, but diametrically opposed. The work of the German artist, is infused, above all, with a cold and methodical spirit, grouping reality into themes - trees, landscapes, urban settings, clouds, horizons, etc. In my work, there are clouds, horizons, trees, marbles, hair, flowers, etc., but they are al! jolted by the anarchy of desire and the non- chronological stimulation of the external image. I might get up one morning and do a series on my now wrinkled old feet, or go down to the hotel bar and find myself seduced by a scar on a workman's knee or the long blonde hair of a nimble adolescent.
Conceptual art in the seventies impressed me beyond measure. Too bad it has had such an influence in the nineties, nearly melting the very backbone of painting. I am a painter and that's how I treat my photography. Conceptual artists use photography, but it is the attitude or idea that is important and not the photo- graphic image. To understand this, let's take the example of the chair - its definition and photograph in the famous work by Kosuth. Obviously the photograph of the chair is not the work of art. In my self-portrait, a stray and solitary lawn chair in Hyde Park, London, the work is, in fact, the document.

I can say that the meseta of Castille is where I do my work, but it is in the lush green of London, where I spend one month a year, wrapped in its intricate contradictions, chromatic as well as emotional, where I find and have found my fountain of images.
I am looking forward to this show. I have never written anything about my Documentos Básicos nor have I ever exhibited the whole collection or even a large number of the works. This may be considered an unusual event - the ultimate show, from which other, future exhibitions may arise. At first glance, papering the walls with these images, I would like to project Darío Villalba as the all-encompassing painter who aims to embrace the universal spirit of painting and, at the same time, beckons you to perform the complicated task of seeking out the individual pieces. I think this exhibition is a great challenge for Miguel Fernández-Cid and for myself, as well, but as I have said many times, if nothing is ventured, nothing is gained, not even freedom.