Tableros del bar La Vaquería de la calle Libertad (Boards from the Bar La Vaquería on Calle Libertad)

La Vaquería, located on Madrid’s Calle Libertad, was a bar frequented by the countercultural bohemian crowd and offering, as advertised at its entrance, “painting, music & poetry, whisky and sandwiches”. In the early hours of 8 June 1976, it was the target of a bomb attack by the fascist group Guerrilleros de Cristo Rey, which left it partially destroyed. In response, Ceesepe and Borja Satústregui created painted chipboard panels to protect the broken glass in the door. The central panel, by Satústregui, displays a style similar to Antoni Tàpies’ informalism, contrasting with the two side panels by a very young Ceesepe: one of them, in oil, was left unfinished; the other, created using markers, has lost some of its colour over time. Months later, these same panels were attacked again by the Guerrilleros, this time with gunshots, the impacts of which remain visible. The collaboration between these two artists exemplifies how art overflowed from institutional spaces during La Movida (Madrid’s countercultural scene during the Spanish transition to democracy) to inhabit bars, album covers, films and magazines.

Raúl Martínez Arranz