CVA (Grup d'artistes)

CVA is the acronym for Comité de Vigilancia Artística (Artistic Surveillance Committee), a collective formed by Juan Luis Moraza and María Luisa Fernández that was active between 1979 and 1985. Their Conceptual art marked a turning point in the art of the Basque Country. Calling themselves an ‘artistic enterprise’, they put their name to a series of works exploring the relationship between art and philosophy, dramatically reducing the artistic object to its physical boundaries – such as the frame and the plinth – and ironically explored the golden colour as a symbol of artistic tradition, both in the sense of aura/brilliance and value/surplus value. CVA’s first public appearance was in 1980 in the group exhibition Espacio poético experimental, at the Casa de España, Paris. In 1982, CVA presented its first solo exhibition in the Aula de Cultura of the Caja de Ahorros Municipal, Bilbao. The following year, CVA exhibited at the Sala Metrònom, Barcelona, under the title Cicatriu a la matriu. Although CVA was dissolved in 1985, in 2005 the Artium centre in Vitoria-Gasteiz presented the monographic exhibition CVA. Juan Luis Moraza y Marisa Fernández.