Modular el metal
19 November | 23 January
Rafael Canogar
Imprints (Paintings 1958-1962)
M-F. 10-14 | 16.30-20.30
Galería Guillermo de Osma presents an exhibition of historical work by Rafael Canogar (Toledo, 1935) from the period of the El Paso group, of which he is the last living and active member. The show, which brings together fourteen paintings executed between 1958 and 1962, focuses on the early period of the artist, which positioned Canogar as one of the main pioneers of Informalist painting in Europe in the late 1950s.
In those years, in a moment of social conformity and conservatism in Spain, Canogar created a gestural language of abstract painting which was provocative and radically new. The exhibited works illustrate this dynamic sense of energy and freedom that inhabited the artists from El Paso, and that Canogar expresses through a visceral and fierce brushstroke. The oil painting is intervened by the artist’s own hands, tracing furrows with his fingers, reminiscent of the peasant who leaves his imprints with his plough on the Castilian lands, land of the painter.
The catalogue which accompanies the exhibition includes a recent interview of the artist and a text by British art historian Robert Brown.
