Pablo Echaurren: in a dialogue with Futurism

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Pablo Echaurren’s work suggests that the modernist avant-garde’s anarchic impulse still resonates in popular culture, says Peter Jones

Pablo Echaurren: Iconoclast by Sandro Parmiggiani

The relevance of the past to today was addressed in a recent exhibition at the Estorick Collection, London ‘Pablo Echaurren: Iconoclast’ (now closed). It featured recent collages by the artist and author Pablo Echaurren (b.1951) who is son of the Chilean surrealist Roberto Matta (1911–2002). His collages represent a dialogue with Italian Futurism,  the avant-garde art movement founded in 1909 by the writer and poet F. T. Marinetti (1876–1944).

Echhaurren amassed a collection of Futurist material, which he re-casts in his collages. In these brightly coloured, vibrant works fragments of Futurist publications, typography and imagery sit with modern logos, advertisements, pictures of punk rockers and comic strip characters. He seems to suggest that the modernist avant-garde’s anarchic impulse still resonates in popular culture. All the collages are illustrated in the booklet accompanying the show that also has a short essay on Echaurren.  

Pablo Echaurren: Iconoclast  by Sandro Parmiggiani is published by Silvana Editoriale 2014. 65 pp. 29 colour illus. It is available from The Estorick Collection