Encuentros 72-22 - Los encuentros del 72-22 Pamplona

Los Encuentros de Pamplona 72-22

This is an international cultural encuentro (Spanish for a gathering) to discuss the complex challenges of today’s world and to consider the most urgent social issues. Thought, the arts, literature and music stand as tools for exploration, always based on dialogue and the intervention of leading personalities on the world scene and numerous artistic propositions in line with the new forms called for by today’s world.

Why these new Encuentros?

The holding of the Encuentros de Pamplona 72-22 marks the 50th anniversary of the Encuentros de Pamplona in 1972. However, its purpose, apart from this important commemoration, is to establish a starting point to move towards a new cultural dimension for our community in a sustainable, innovative way – also transformational – able to offer an ethical dimension and nurture a critical public.

What did the 72 Encuentros represent?

Summer of 1972 saw the Encuentros de Pamplona, a cutting-edge international festival that is still considered to be the most important art event aimed at the general public that has taken place in Spain.

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The image of los encuentros by frederic amat

I am part of an intermediate generation of visual artists at the cusp between two centuries. In the last century, posters were the means of local communication and publicising a range of cultural events. Today new technologies and the net have made the image radiate out through endless screens with other possible codes.

When one “paints” a poster one becomes in a way the visual ambassador for an idea, in this case an event involving a contemporary gathering of different art forms and at the same time a commemoration: the Encuentros de Pamplona 72-22. For those who were around at the time in 1972, at the end of the Franco dictatorship, the original Encuentros were an open window from Pamplona. A breath of fresh air.

I took the invitation to create the image and poster for this year’s Encuentros de Pamplona 72-22 as a privilege and a challenge.

How was I to set this down in an image that the viewer is supposed to remember in a few moments, to identify amid the maelstrom of images that assail us every day?

This is my proposition: a sprouting of ink, a cluster of spots. A dialogue where the brush strokes call to one another, on different colour territories that want to celebrate their meeting and exchange of ideas.

Frederic Amat