ALBERT RÀFOLS-CASAMADA.
VIEW AND SIGN
The art gallery Fernández-Braso presents an exhibition dedicated to Albert Ràfols Casamada (Barcelona, 1923-2009), referring to the lyrical abstraction Spanish of the second half of the XX century.
The set of works exhibited, consisting of some thirty paintings on canvas, allows us to follow the evolution of the artist since the mid 80's, when the artist is in full artistic maturity, until the end of his career, with works dated in the year 2007.
The unanimous recognition of the history and relevance of his work comes in the 1980's, when he awarded the National Prize of Plastic Arts. It is at this moment when the painting becomes even more free and energetic, and reaffirms the plastic language that will distinguish you as one of the most important abstract painters Spanish. His painting, based on four basic elements: color, stain, structure and rhythm, it sets up a series of environments pictorial as intense as poetic, seemingly simple but very elaborate. The gesture is balanced and balanced, the shapes can evoke aspects of the immediate environment of the artist, joined the evocative capacity of color, emphasize the ideal of beauty that emanate from each of the works.
In 1984 the Museum of Fine Arts of Bilbao, he dedicated a retrospective exhibition. In 1985, the Joan Miró Foundation dedicated a retrospective exhibition, after which it will display in the Museum of Contemporary Art of Madrid. In 1988, Victoria Combalía published a monograph on the artist, as it will be, later J. F Yvars. In 2001, with 78 years, the MACBA in Barcelona and the IVAM in Valencia devote paths retrospective exhibitions.
In the exhibition you can follow the evolution from his work from the 80s up to the one made at the end of his career. See how the density and gestures in own of these years are giving way to a growing debugging formal and economy of means. It is a period of intense poetic and vital. In 2001, the Reina Sofía Museum organised an exhibition in the Abbey of Santo Domingo de Silos. In 2003 he published his poetry anthology, The color of the stones. His work, therefore, is immersed in a journey to the essential, but maintaining the identity and intensity. As he Looked over his last years, Ràfols Casamada simplifies until the end of the process of making their paintings, converting them into pure visual poetry of signs and symbols that seem to float on funds of vivid colors.
His paintings are in museums and public and private collections around the world, such as the Guggenheim in New York and Bilbao, the British Museum and the Tate Gallery in London, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Reina Sofia in Madrid.
From march 10 to April 23, 2016.