A commitment to the new art Journeys of the avant-garde in Catalonia through the Rafael and María Teresa Santos Torroella collection Temporary exhibition

The caves of Altamira, the pinnacle of prehistoric art, would become a source of inspiration for the renewal of the more restless and inquiring forms of art. Under the category of primitivism and in tune with international expressionist and abstract currents, this aspiration came to fruition in a series of meetings of artists, writers and intellectuals held in Santillana del Mar in 1949 and 1950 that came to be known as the Altamira School.

Initially promoted by Mathias Goeritz, they boasted the participation of many important critics and artists: Ángel Ferrant, Ricardo Gullón, Pablo Beltrán de Heredia, Eduardo Westerdahl, Luis Felipe Vivanco, Sebastià Gasch, Eudald Serra, Modest Cuixart, Josep Llorens Artigas, Pancho Cossío, Alberto Sartoris, Tony Stubbing, Willi Baumeister and Carla Prina, among others.

Various activities, exhibitions and publications were generated around the Altamira School, which marked a step forward in the dissemination and consolidation of the new abstract trends which were in vogue in the 1950s. In this sense, one of the consequences of the Santillana meetings was the organisation of the 1st International Congress of Abstract Art and the International Exhibition of Abstract Art in Santander in 1953.