Josep Guinovart

JOSEP GUINOVART BERTRAN (Barcelona, 1927 - 2007).
Untitled. 1975
Intervened engraving (paint, string and pencil), P/T copy.
Signed and dated by hand.
Measurements: 36 x 31 cm; 40 x 35 cm (frame).

In the context of Josep Guinovart's mid-seventies production, this work exemplifies the artist's desire to fuse drawing, object and matter, exploring the body, desire and memory from a deeply sensorial abstraction.

The image starts from a graphic base dominated by dense and nervous black wefts, executed in pencil and through the language of engraving itself, which generate an organic and turbulent space, almost bodily. On this structure, Guinovart introduces direct interventions of colored paint -red, green and blue- and the incorporation of rope, which bursts in as a real and tactile element, definitively breaking the two-dimensionality of the support.

The red, applied in a forceful way, acts as a symbolic focus, associated with vital energy, the erotic or the drive, while the green provides an organic counterpoint, linked to nature. The small blue accent works almost like an eye or signal, introducing a visual tension within the whole. The rope, integrated into the graphic framework, reinforces the idea of binding, bond or wound, and connects the work with Guinovart's interest in poor materials charged with symbolic resonance.

Josep Guinovart is represented in the Museums of Contemporary Art in Barcelona, Madrid and Mexico City, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, the Museo de Bellas Artes in Bilbao, the Museo San Telmo in San Sebastián, the Museo Eusebio Sempere in Alicante, the Museo de Navarra in Tafalla, the Casa de las Américas in Havana, the Bocchum Museum in Germany, the Museo de Bellas Artes in Long Island, New York, and the Museo Patio Herreriano in Valladolid.