WROCLAW, POLAND - Muzeum Miejskie Wroclawia presents Guinovart, on view through July 31, 2005. This exhibition, comprised of forty-two paintings (oil, mixed medium on wood and gouache on card) and 11 collages for the catalogue illustration, endeavours to show all of Guinovart’s work as a result of intellectual reflection, of a continual self-analysis and an examination of the world around him.
Josep Guinovart (Barcelona, 1927) is one of the most distinctive figures on the Spanish artistic scene. At first linked to the Dau al Set group, and later to one of the founders of the Tahull group – together with Jaume Muxart, Antoni Tàpies and Joan Josep Tharrats-, Guinovart’s roots are firmly embedded in the natural medium and the sensations it creates. From the outset, he focused his art on the object in itself as more authentic than its version in paint, and criticised the pretence of painting in a small piece entitled El Trigo (Wheat) (1948), in which the artist replaced the painting of wheat with genuine grains and ears of wheat glued directly to the canvas, such that the palpable, real object substitutes the fictional creation of the painting.
Guinovart uses an enormous variety of materials and techniques, always endeavouring to illustrate vulnerability, fragility and insubstantiality, through brutalist techniques and an agile manipulation of space.
In the sixties, he began to express himself through the objects themselves, which allowed him to broaden his creative scope, achieving his own personal aesthetics and language, expressive mediums through which he bared the essentials of his powerful and unmistakable personality.
After 1964, Guinovart commenced using paintings as a support for objects, attaching an actual window to the frame instead of painting a window (La Ventana – The Window), painting a charismatic self portrait that humorously alludes to his first profession, entitled Homenaje al pintor de paredes (Homage to a House Painter), in which he placed an old, paint-spattered hand ladder on the frame. His desire to extend his painting in size naturally led him in 1966 to his first large-scale presentation commissioned for the shop windows of a large department store.
Guinovart’s work, replete with sensuality and a wealth of materials, is the result of a dialogue between popular culture, particularly Mediterranean and Latin American, traditional crafts and the spirit of the avant garde in the second half of the twentieth century. Intuitive, vital, with a strong, combative personality, his work also evidences a commitment to social causes that has only grown stronger over the years. For Guinovart, art is a form of knowledge, a way to understand reality that allows him to transform that reality into art, however it is expressed. But, in the end, from the smallest object to large scale creations, it all comes back to painting. |