The Pop Art movement, whose hallmark was the use of images and themes taken from the world of mass communication and advertising, emerged in England in the mid-1950s as a new artistic trend that challenged Abstract Expressionism, which was considered vacuous and elitist, and soon spread to the United States, where it made a major impact. First coined by the British critic Lawrence Alloway in 1962, the term was used to define the form of art that certain young people were producing, based on popular images. At the same time, such important magazines as Time, Life or Newsweek ran essays on the new artistic style, although it was recognised earlier by the general public and mainstream magazines than by specialised critics or contemporary art museums.

Pop Art appropriated the plastic techniques of the mass media, such as comics, photography and the different procedures derived from it - enlargements and juxtapositions, collages, photomontages - and advertising posters, with their different visual techniques - accumulation, opposition, suppression. Two other distinctive features are the use of acrylic paint, derived from the plain colours of posters, and the cultivation of a two-dimensional perspective.

This exhibition brings together works by the most important artists of American Pop Art, such as Keith Haring (Pennsylvania, 1958 - New York, 1990), Roy Lichtenstein (New York, 1923 - 1997), Robert Rauschenberg (Texas, 1925 - Florida, 2008) and Andy Warhol (Pittsburgh, 1928 - New York, 1987).

The exhibition shows how any everyday object can be elevated to the category of art. It shows the importance of mass culture, nowadays an expression of everyday life in the public and private spheres. It introduces consumption and commodities into the collective imagination of advanced societies. And it turns a page in the unfinished book of the history of Art, where anything and everything can be expected.

Lola Durán Úcar is the curator of The Pop Art Culture. She holds a PhD in the History of Art and Visual Culture from the Autonomous University of Madrid and a degree in Philosophy and Literature from the University of Zaragoza. As an exhibition curator and art critic, her research focuses primarily on twentieth-century art.

She has been a member of the Spanish Association of Art Critics since 2005. She is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Pilar Citoler Foundation, Madrid; of the Advisory Committee of the Pablo Serrano Aragonese Institute of Contemporary Art and Culture (Zaragoza, Government of Aragon) and of the Board of Trustees of the Miquel Navarro Foundation of the Government of Valencia. She has had an extensive professional career dedicated to the research and dissemination of contemporary art: curating exhibitions, producing publications and cataloguing institutional and private collections. She has curated exhibitions for San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Madrid; Es Baluard-Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Palma de Mallorca; Goya Museum, Zaragoza; Sala Kubo, San Sebastián; National Museum of Fine Arts, Buenos Aires, Argentina; National Museum of Fine Arts, Santiago, Chile; Torres García Museum, Montevideo, Uruguay; Jordan National Gallery of Amman, Jordan; Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore alla Pietrasanta, Naples; K Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea; Meet You Museum, Yintai Center, Beijing; or Instituto Cervantes, Beijing, among others.

She is the author of numerous monographs and publications, including: “The Aesthetics of Excess”, in Concerning Raw Art, Círculo de Bellas Artes of Madrid, Ediciones Arte y Estética, 2007; “Disasters of War, Contemporary Disasters Francisco de Goya and Jakes and Dinos Chapman”, in "Goya the Engraver. Precursor of Contemporary Art", Goya Museum, Zaragoza, 2017; and the Catalogue Raisonné of Sculptor Pablo Serrano, Azcona Foundation-Government of Aragon, 2017.