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1995
The Antonio Saura Foundation (ASF) was created by notarial deed on the 16th of December of 1995 in the city of Cuenca.
In said deed, Antonio Saura bestowed a collection of 365 drawings to the Foundation and a number of other documents that made up the 1994 Collection, also entitled Nulla dies sine línea. At the same time, representatives of the democratic institutions of the day, intellectuals, friends and family members were designated as trustees of the Foundation, in all of whom Antonio Saura sought to deposit responsibility for spreading awareness of his work and aesthetic thoughts, as well as creating an important Centre of Art. Similarly, the Statutes were approved which he himself drew up with his closest collaborators.
Previously, on the 11th of December of 1995, the painter signed, in the presence of the press, an agreement with the Castilla-La Mancha Regional Government, the Cuenca Provincial Council, the Town Hall of Cuenca and the Castilla-La Mancha Caja (building society), through which the Institution would be endowed with a XVIII century palace (the Zavala House-Museum), chosen expressly by the painter, to be converted into the headquarters of the Foundation Museum. At the same time, the budgetary endowment of diverse amounts was approved which would guarantee its correct functioning and continuity, and in a similar vein, at the suggestion of the painter himself, the acquisition of paintings was agreed upon to complete the collection of pictures that he agreed to cede permanently to the Foundation.
The objectives of the foundation created by Antonio Saura and to which he put his name, were: the promotion, diffusion and defence of expressions of the human spirit, from all times and all nations, that contain a sense of progress and modernity (in both ethical and aesthetic sense) and, particularly, of contemporary art in its different expressive forms; the exhibition, cataloguing, preservation and diffusion of the work and thoughts of Antonio Saura; the organisation of studies, seminars, courses, conferences, speeches, publications, exhibitions and any other activity aimed at artistic education and the perfecting of aesthetic awareness in relation to the values previously mentioned; the publication of books, documents, discs, films, etc; the reproduction, in different forms, of works of an artistic nature; and the awarding of prizes and grants for the purposes of contributing to the promotion of the vocation of young artists and diffusing their work.
For all this, Antonio Saura wanted to endow the incipient foundation with a series of works, catalogues, archives, etc, which would facilitate the study of his work and his person, at the same time as they would help to create an attractive cultural centre which would also have room for other exhibitions on a variety of artists and subjects.
1996
Building work begins at Casa Zavala after the eviction of the last tenant. Until the completion of the reformation of the building, forecast for September, the body of art work which formed part of the initial endowment by Antonio Saura for his Foundation was kept safe and stored by the painter himself at his address in Cuenca, in C/ San Pedro, 25.
1997
In the month of July, Antonio Saura falls ill. The reformation of Casa Zavala was already very advanced and Antonio Saura himself, from his hospital bed, continues to supervise its progress through plans and reports which those responsible for the reformation and family members would present to him.
Antonio Saura leaves hospital. Despite his fragile health, he continues attending Board meetings, he follows the progress of the building works on the future headquarters of the Foundation and works on what would be his first exhibition right up to the last days of his life.
1998
In the last weeks of his life, together with the designer Miguel López, current director of the ASF, he develops the corporate image for his foundation. The original logo was then designed in the shape of a drawing by the artist, created especially for this purpose, which the afore-mentioned designer logotyped. In the light of the pressures and threats from the heirs, the use of this logo has currently been abandoned with the second option now in use, which was also developed by Miguel López in collaboration with the artist.
A short time before dying, Antonio Saura was also busy with designing and preparing what would be his inaugural exhibition in the centre: “The well-kept object”, due for inauguration in September when the centre would open its doors. For this exhibition he asked his siblings for diverse objects, showing them and other friends a selection that he was keeping for this purpose.
Antonio Saura dies on the 22nd of July.
In August, and unexpectedly, Antonio Saura’s heiresses and his executor, Olivier Weber-Caflisch, with whom his daughter Marina had begun a sentimental relationship shortly before his death, expose some alleged post-mortem instructions of Antonio Saura, in which he expressed his renunciation of the continuity of the Foundation which bore his name and which he himself had helped to constitute. Of this supposed last will of Antonio’s, unheard of by close friends and family, including his daughter and wife, no-one had any prior knowledge. In fact these supposed last wishes represent a clear contradiction to the activities and opinions expressed by the painter up to his death. Even Ms Marina Saura, named by her father as Director of the Foundation-Museum, position she accepted and in which she made great efforts, had declared to the press, the day following the death of Antonio Saura, that she would do all she could to ensure that the Foundation would begin to function as such and as her father wanted. At this very moment, however, the painter’s daughter, together with his widow and his executor, impugn the constitution of the Foundation through administrative and judicial channels.
And so begins, therefore, the legal process set up by the Castilla-La Mancha Regional Government to fight the attempts by the daughter, widow and executor to delegitimize the existence of the Foundation in Cuenca. It is important to note that during the litigation years no-one, neither institutions nor physical individuals, doubted the legality and content of Antonio Saura’s testament, the fight was purely for the legitimacy, both legal and moral, of the centre that the painter had created.
In relation to the legal legitimacy of the Foundation, all the judicial rulings to-date have been favourable to the ASF and contrary to the arguments put forward by Saura’s heirs. Despite this, the doors have always been open at the Cuenca Foundation for a possible understanding, something always frustrated by Antonio Saura’s daughter and his executor, who by then had got married, and who began a systematic campaign of discrediting both people and institutions, including judicial ones, such as the Supreme Court magistrates. This orchestrated defamation campaign, which continues to-date, reached an extreme when a written document against the ASF of Cuenca appeared in the national press.
In the midst of this situation, the ASF has knowledge that the work from the collection Chronicle of 1994, also known as Nulla dies sine línea, which Antonio Saura wanted to bestow on the Foundation at its beginnings, was being sold off, divided into small lots. Said work, as has been indicated, was being stored by Antonio Saura in anticipation of depositing it with Casa Zavala when the reformation was complete, fact which meant that the painter never got round to handing it over personally. This disintegration of the work constituted a clear break with the will of the artist, who conceived the collection as a unique group, as he himself had expressed on many occasions in the presence of family and friends, rejecting any offers to buy them separately.
2006
The process continued over the years before the Regional Government, the High Courts of Justice and the Supreme Court, concluding with the ruling of the Supreme Court, recognising the legality of the Foundation.
In April of 2006 the Saura Estate makes public a document called “Respecting the will of Antonio Saura” relating to which it is interesting to note two circumstances: firstly, that 90% of the signatories either didn’t know Antonio Saura personally or hadn’t spoken with him in years being, therefore, ignorant of his true intentions regarding the ASF. Secondly, none of the signatories approached this Foundation to gather information with which to compare the ideas and thoughts supplied by the Saura Estate. On the other hand, the document does not reflect the multitude of people who refused to subscribe to it, many of them intimate friends and close family members of the artist, who were aware of Antonio’s joy about the opening of the Foundation-Museum that bore his name.
At the request of the Castilla-La Mancha Ministry of Culture – at that time occupied by Ms Blanca Calvo -, it is decided at the end of the year to remove the foundation from the situation it found itself in. To do so the two siblings of the artist were contacted – Mª Angeles and Carlos Saura – as were close friends of the painter – Gustavo Gili, Hans Meinke, Antonio Pérez and Pierre Canova – people who had decided to remain on the sidelines awaiting the definitive ruling of the courts. All those mentioned, with the exception of Gustavo Gili, suffering from a serious illness, agree to become involved in the project and form part of the ASF Board of Trustees, once the viability of the proposal presented is confirmed with regard to finance guarantees and functional conditions. The board is therefore reconvened with the naming of various new members, a new president is elected – Mª Angeles Saura -, and agreements are renewed with municipal, provincial and regional institutions, as well as with the old trustees Emilio and Santiago Catalá and Pedro Mombiedro, who since the death of Antonio Saura had continued to work on the maintenance of the Foundation during the most difficult years of its existence.
2007
At the board meeting of the 14th of May, Miguel López is named as Director who, from 1st of June, will take charge of the institution. Measures are also approved for the reformation of Casa Zavala with the objective of converting it into a centre for modern contemporary art, well-endowed museographically and with the most demanding measures of security, to thereby convert it into an exhibition space, always following the instructions of the painter, which the Foundation preserves.
2008
The works of art of Antonio Saura upon which the ASF initially relied were those which the institutions purchased in due course so that they could be deposited in Casa Zavala. The Regional Government contributed the series called “Death and nothing”, of autonomous ownership, a collection of 27 paintings on paper with texts by the Swiss writer Jacques Chessex, purchased from the editor Pierre Canova at the end of the nineties. The Council of Cuenca acquired another four works of art for this same purpose. To these works must be added other donations made by patrons and friends: the Moi series, 18 serigraphs donated by the editor Gustavo Gili; diverse and abundant graphic works together with various first edition books donated by Hans Meinke, Antonio Saura’s main editor; thirty photographs of Carlos Saura from the series which originated his brother Antonio’s Moi series, plus other documents about the painter filmed by Carlos Saura, as well as many other photographs that portray the life of Antonio Saura in images. Other donations and contributions from both Carlos and Mª Angeles Saura and her husband Marcos Pérez consisting in original works, engravings, photographs, books, documents and diverse objects. A good number of works have also been donated by diverse collaborators and friends of the ASF.
On the 22nd of February of 2008 the renovated headquarters of the Antonio Saura Foundation, located at Casa Zavala in Cuenca, are inaugurated. The event is attended by the President of Castilla-La Mancha, José Mª Barreda, the Mayor of Cuenca, Francisco J. Pulido, the President of the Council of Cuenca, Juan Ávila, as well as the siblings of the painter, Carlos Saura and Mª Angeles Saura, accompanied by all the members of the board, as well as many of the artist’s friends and family.
In July a judicial ruling states that criminal proceedings are not appropriate for reclaiming possession of the 1994 Collection (Nulles dies sine línea), the ownership of which by the ASF had been previously recognised by a Supreme Court ruling. This resolution does not, therefore, diminish the legitimacy of the claim, not does it exhaust other legal options to do so.
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