Although the predominant discourse on the art of the 20th century has made abstraction its main topic, the fact is that modernity is also expressed through figurative art and realism. This happens either from positions that are in favour of renovation or clearly avant-gardist –the case of magic realism, New Objectivity or Social Realism–, or from reactionary postures which, under the anti-avant-garde slogan of a ‘return to order’, argue for the recovery of an art with ties to contemporary subject matter but subjected to academic rules.