Contemporary art settles into an Axarquía village

La Colección, the exhibition space in the Axarquía village of Macharaviaya which opened last year, has renewed its collection with works by Chema Cobo, Elena Laverón, Robert Harvey, Chema Lumbreras and José Seguiri, among others. This new collection offers a rural stroll through the Malaga-based creations that shook up art in the late twentieth century.

To celebrate the first anniversary of the exhibition space, a new collection of modern art by some of Malaga's most celebrated contemporary artists has opened.

Among the pieces are works by the American painter, Robert Harvey, who resided in the Axarquía village for many years. His work hangs alongside pieces by Chema Cobo, Elena Laverón, Chema Lumbreras and José Seguiri.

Part of the collection has been donated by private collectors linked to the Lamardegatos cultural association, which is curating the exhibition together with Macharaviaya town hall. Other pieces have been donated by the artists themselves. "They are delighted to exhibit here and many of them are looking forward to it. Nobody has said no when I have asked them, everything has been easy," says Arturo Ruiz Meliveo, one of the organisers of the exhibition.

The aim was to bring a new tourist attraction to a village that has had deep connections with the cultural movement since the 1970s, when Harvey and Buly chose the peace and quiet of this part of the Axarquía to live and create. In its first year, around 2,300 people visited La Colección, which is open from Wednesday to Sunday.

La Colección adds to the historical and cultural offer of this tiny village, which is home to just 500 residents. At one end of the village, the Gálvez museum bears witness to Macharaviaya in the 17th century and is named after Bernardo de Gálvez, the American Independence hero, and his family, who lived there.

As for this latest exhibition, pieces by Elena Laverón occupy the central area, among them El Caminante, a small-scale replica of a large-scale urban sculpture, the artist's most recognisable piece. There is a view of Torremolinos by Bola Barrionuevo; an acrylic on canvas with a perspective of the Plaza de Félix Sáenz by Robert Harvey and a beach scene and Pescaíto Frito by Chema Lumbreras. There is a piece by Sebastián Navas, a painting by Jorge Lindell and, behind a panel, a painting of a woman by Chema Cobo, who died in March this year.

La Colección, with a "personal and emotional" selection, reflects a very specific period of Malaga's cultural history at the end of the twentieth century and it does so through the works that art lovers acquired from the 1970s to the 2000s.