"ZUSH"; ALBERTO PORTA (Barcelona, 1946). Lot n° 22

"ZUSH"; ALBERTO PORTA (Barcelona, 1946). Untitled, 2010. Photography and collage. Signed and dated on the back. Size: 29 x 15 cm; 39 x 25 cm (frame). Zush was Alberto Porta's artistic alter ego between 1968 and 2001, the year in which Evru, his new character, was born. Defined by himself as ArtCieMist, artist, scientist and mystic, he trained as a self-taught artist and exhibited for the first time in 1968. That same year he created his own state, an alternative conception of reality called Evrugo, with its own elements and an alphabet of his own invention. In 1975 he received a scholarship from the Juan March Foundation and J. W. Fullbright to study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was introduced to the use of new technologies. From the 1970s onwards he took part in solo and group exhibitions that made him internationally known. Some of these exhibitions were Documenta in Kassel (1977), "New images of Spain" (Guggenheim, New York, 1980), "Les magiciens de la Terre" (Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1989), "Drawing on chance" (MOMA, New York, 1995), "Zush Tecura" (MACBA, Barcelona, 2000) and his retrospective organised in 2000 by the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. That same year he was awarded the City of Barcelona Prize for the Plastic Arts. He has participated in different editions of the Cologne and Chicago art fairs, and in all the editions of the Basel fair. In his new phase as Evru, in 2004, he presented the exhibition "From Zush to Evru: the second reincarnation" at the Haim Chanin Gallery in New York. His work can be found in public and private collections all over the world, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim in New York, the Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, the MACBA, the Museum of Modern Art in Valencia and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, among many others.