And what is from the mid 70's, a time of transition, disputes and controversies by the hegemony artistic (Tàpies, the conceptual art, the new figuration); from a city, Barcelona, the epicenter of the Spanish modernity and receiving of the ideas and thoughts of the May ' 68; and from a group, “Plot”, whose members -Broto, Gonzalo Tena, Xavier Grau, Javier Rubio and Federico Jimenez Losantos-, abanderaron utopian ideas and revolutionaries. Inspired by philosophers and thinkers such as Althusser and Lacan, moved to its artwork and texts some of its precepts: the neomarxismo, psychoanalysis, structuralism. Their theoretical sources were the French publications Tel Quel or Peinture, cahiers théoriques. In them pointed out by the poet and art critic Marcelin Pleynet, theoretical and inspiring a trend of abstract painting French Supports/Surfaces, with which both have been linked to the “paint-painting” of the group Plot. These influences were joined by those of the abstract painters american, Pollock, Rothko, Newman. In short, all those that were expressed through color.

Since then, after this journey that it took the collective to the individual, after having exhibited in museums, art centers and galleries, national and international, are very relevant; to receive recognition and awards and to enter their works in important collections, the painting of Broto continues to explore the paths and the possibilities of abstraction in its most fluid, intense, emotive and personal. Up to the present time, the creator of a work ever more free, more independent and contemporary. “My paintings, my images, they're like freeze frames of a film without end. Have a look, but they could have another, are an interim summary of the luck of the infinite”[1].

The exhibition in Fernández-Braso presents a selection of works made in the last two years, paintings on paper, a; digital prints retouched with acrylic paint, other. A work that “not normally exposed only, as if you needed the work on canvas, the “box” to gain identity, although I am convinced that it happens all to the contrary.”

The starting point of Broto on the use of the computer (software design, printers) was 1996, with the series “The games”. Since that time, has become “a highly effective business tool. It is quick and versatile, allows you to rectify and to experiment with the color and the images by varying them immediately. Attempt to divert the rules and force the program to get results that are “unexpected” that are of great utility.” For the artist, rather than a relationship between two procedures contrary is “a mixed technique, the synthesis of the two procedures, without privileging none. It would be a sort of oxymoron, this, on the other hand, almost everything that I do.”

The result is a work that is “almost always leads to an internal rivalry between, for example, geometrical shapes and spaces organic or fields of color, opaque and transparent. A work that is changing continuously and it is a deliberate movement”. A painting that happens to the margin of the reality, “had no love to be opportunistic”.

Will be part of the exhibition, the four works, the last large-format created by the artist expressly for the exhibition and that they envision a new state, or impulse of aesthetics, with the slight presence of new, geometric elements, as well as in ways that seem to refer to beings and elements of nature, and reminiscent of some of his celebrated works of the eighties.

Next to the paintings on paper screen a short documentary about the artist that will be able to see Broto in your study, in your context, working on some of the works that will be displayed at the exhibition.

The exhibition ends January 30, 2021.

[1] The texts quoted belong to Broto, in conversation with the gallery. November, 2020.