Rafael Canogar

RAFAEL CANOGAR (Toledo, 1935).
Untitled.
Etching on paper. Copy 15/120.
Signed, justified and dated in pencil.
Measurements: 32 x 25 cm; 52,5 x 37,5 cm (paper); 48 x 44 cm (frame).
Rafael Canogar is one of the fundamental figures of Spanish contemporary art in the second half of the 20th century. Trained between 1949 and 1954 with the painter Daniel Vázquez Díaz, he began his career linked to the avant-garde and evolved early towards abstraction. In 1957 he was co-founder of the influential group El Paso, the essential nucleus of Spanish informalism, a movement with which he achieved a rapid international projection.
During the sixties, his work moved from material abstraction to a critical and narrative figuration, focused on the human condition and the social tensions of his time. From 1975 onwards, he developed his own iconography based on faces, masks and heads, converted into plastic signs that reflect on the loss of individuality of contemporary man. Currently, his work is part of fundamental collections of international modern art, such as the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin or the Art Institute of Chicago.