This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
World Design Spotlight: “Suma y sigue”
In 2009 the MuVIM (Valencian Museum of the Enlightenment and Modernity) hosted the exhibition “Suma + Sigue del Disseny a la Comunitat Valenciana” (Onwards and upwards with design in the Valencian Community), which summarized the last 25 years in the promotion of Valencian design as a factor of business competitiveness and as an image of the modernity of Valencian society. The display was curated by the designer Paco Bascuñán, who died suddenly four days after the inauguration. Nacho Lavernia also curated, with the collaboration of Pepe Gimeno and Daniel Nebot.
The exhibition brought together 250 pieces created by 130 Valencian companies and designers. In barely two months it welcomed nearly 15,000 visitors, which was an unprecedented success for a display of this nature.
The galvanising role of the Valencian administrations, led by the IMPIVA, which endeavoured to spread the importance of design in industry was key during the period that began a quarter of a century earlier and culminated with the holding of this exhibition.
In the decade of the nineteen-eighties, the aim of the IMPIVA (Valencian Government Institute for Small and Medium Industry) was to modernize Valencian industry. That decade also saw the formation, in 1985, of the Association of Designers of the Valencian Community (ADCV), which was key to developing an industrial design culture and worked to divulge and disseminate the Valencian creativity that was beginning to boom at that time.
An extremely important action, held at the time, was the Encuentros de Diseño de Alicante (Alicante Design Meetings), also in ’85, attended by true masters of design of that era. That initiative had an enormous repercussion.
Today, that ground-breaking work of the IMPIVA is bearing fruit. According to data of the IVIE (Valencian Institute for Economic Research), companies that provide design services to other companies generate almost 100 million euros of added value and over 1,200 jobs.
Sectors associated with design represent almost 13% of Valencian GDP and 11.9% of employment, in other words, some 215,000 people work in sectors where this factor is decisive.
According to data of the IVIE (Valencian Institute for Economic Research), companies that provide design services to other companies generate almost 100 million euros of added value and over 1,200 jobs.
Returning to the exhibition of 2009, the name chosen for the show was an acknowledgement of the artistic publication “Suma y Sigue”, published by José Huguet and edited by Vicente Aguilera Cerní, which in the nineteen-sixties became a channel for the introduction in Spain of international trends and aesthetic debates. The magazine covered all cultural spheres, from art and theatre to graphic design and architecture, and included articles written by personalities such as Joan Fuster or Tomás Llorens, as well as covers designed by Tàpies, Saura or the Equipo Crónica.
The name, applied to the design exhibition, alluded to the idea of an ongoing process, in continual evolution, as explained by the curators of the display, which included pieces by young designers such as Héctor Serrano, Raky Martínez or Ibán Ramón, together with others by veterans such as Ximo Roca.
Photos: Flickr Exposición Suma + Sigue del disseny a la Comunidad Valenciana. IMPIVA. MuVIM.