EXHIBITION El accidente de Vollard

Pedro Luis Cembranos

01

DEC

2017

31

DEC

2017

DATE AND TIME 01/12/2017 - 31/12/2017
Monday to Sunday and public holidays: 10:00 - 21:00
24 and 31 December, 10:00 - 15:00
25 December, closed

ADMISSION Free admission

VENUE Sala MULTIVERSO
BBVA Foundation
Palacio del Marqués de Salamanca
Paseo de Recoletos, 10. Madrid

‘El accidente de Vollard’ is a video artwork that employs documentary formats to
examine the death in a road accident of the famous French art dealer Ambroise
Vollard, and the strange circumstances surrounding the event.
In summer 1939, the celebrated gallery owner died from a blow to the back of the
neck with a blunt object carried on the rear shelf of his luxury Talbot, when the
car lost control and rolled over several times at a bend on the Pontchartrain road,
not far from Paris.
Though the most widely accepted version among biographers and researchers
lays the blame for the fatal blow on a bronze sculpture from the art dealer’s own
collection, other theories contend that his neck was broken by an object of a
different nature (a copper pot, a printmaking plate…), with some even venturing
that he was murdered by his chauffeur at the instigation of another prominent
gallery owner.

ARTIST Pedro Luis Cembranos

CURATOR Laura Baigorri

EXHIBITION

MORE

Laura Baigorri

Starting from this anecdote from the annals of art history – in which the collector
is presumed to have been literally killed by a piece from his collection – the
ramifications of Vollard’s death are spun into a narrative weave of a biographical
nature through the testimony of three individuals: Jean-Paul Morel, journalist,
philosopher and Vollard’s biographer; Catherine Geens, art historian and
researcher; and Dominique Forest, a French sculptor.
The tale is filled out by a visit to the scenes where the event unfolded, from Rue
Martignac in Paris to the small town of Tremblay-sur-Mauldre by way of Versailles
and Fontainebleu.
The resulting video leans heavily on the structures of the documentary genre to
illustrate a dark episode where art, death, greed and remembrance intertwine
in the fate of an art dealer and collector whose work contributed in no small
measure to the art market system as we now know it, and whose priceless
collection is today spuriously dispersed across numerous public institutions
and private collections.
Today, not even the grave where his remains lie bears Vollard’s name.
Video, 61’