Nacho Criado (Mengíbar, Jaén, 1943 – Madrid, 2010) is one of the most significant and influential artists in the Spanish contemporary scene, distinguished with the National Prize for Plastic Arts (2009). His work develops in harmony with the experimental practices produced in the adverse climate of the final years of the Franco dictatorship, the most significant manifestation of which was the celebration of the Pamplona Encounters in 1972. Generally associated with conceptual art, his career traverses echoes related to conceptualism, minimalism, land art, povera, and process-based art. Nacho Criado’s work escapes labels or classifications and is situated in the process that flows between the idea and its staging.

In the early 1970s, Criado made intensive use of photography as a field of permanent experimentation, while also being part of the poetics of his installations. His photographic works allowed him, thanks to a relative economy of means, to translate the idea into an image, while also serving as an archaeological memory.

The exhibition Blanco articulates a conjunction of events that transcend the very concept of photography. It is the result of multiple works from the first half of the 1970s that revolve around language and action through photography, where the represented object becomes present in time and space.

The title of the exhibition comes from the eponymous work Blanco, originally presented in 1974 at the German Institute in Madrid. The work reveals the essence of the photographic process through a continuous play of opposites. It establishes a double visual narrative between positive and negative, whose background questions the expansion of language beyond the intrinsic meaning of the word.