Rafael Canogar

The work

Link
2006
114 x 104 cm
Handmade paper construction painted in oil and glued onto wood

In this very austere work from his last period, the painter presents a construction defined by the tension between elementary geometric shapes, two rectangles, and the texture of two different types of superimposed paper. On wood, the larger rectangle painted on handmade paper made by the painter himself, with a rough and irregular texture, interacts with the cinnabar red paint that defines the rectangular shape. In the lower half, glued on top, is a second black rectangle also painted on a different, very fine paper, which filters and translates the irregularity of the texture that serves as its base.

The artist

(1935, Toledo, Spain)

The work belongs to a mature period in the career of Canogar, a historic figure in the Madrid group El Paso, part of a generation of Spanish painters who, in the 1950s, in the midst of Franco’s military dictatorship, adopted abstract expressionism and informalism as an affirmation of individual personality and a way of confronting the totalitarianism of the Franco period (1939-1975) that controlled Spanish society.

Nascut com Rafael García Cano Gómez, va canviar el seu primer cognom per Canogar, cognom que li va ser reconegut legalment i que ha transmès als seus descendents. Deixeble de Daniel Vázquez Díaz (1948-1953), a les primeres obres va trobar la manera d’assolir les avantguardes i, molt aviat, estudiar profundament l’abstracció.Va usar inicialment una tècnica escultopictòrica: amb les mans esgarrapava o espremia la pasta que feia vibrar sobre fons de colors plans. Era una pintura on el gest inicial surt directament del cor. En aquest punt Canogar va encarnar el millor de la pintura matèrica.
Així com la seva primera etapa va ser informalista en una recerca pròpia de la identitat i l’autoafirmació, en les tres o quatre darreres dècades ha fet un extens recorregut artístic des del realisme fins a l’abstracció geomètrica.