Rafael Canogar

RAFAEL CANOGAR (Toledo, 1935).
“P-27-10,” 2014.
Lithograph and silkscreen on paper. HC X/X edition.
Signed and numbered by hand.
Measurements: 81 x 56 cm.
Rafael Canogar is one of the key figures in Spanish contemporary art of the second half of the 20th century. Trained between 1949 and 1954 alongside the painter Daniel Vázquez Díaz, he began his career associated with the avant-garde and evolved early on toward abstraction. In 1957, he co-founded the influential group El Paso, a core group of Spanish Informalism, a movement through which he quickly gained international recognition.
During the 1960s, his work shifted from material abstraction toward a critical and narrative figuration, centered on the human condition and the social tensions of his time. Beginning in 1975, he developed his own iconography based on faces, masks, and heads, transformed into visual symbols that reflect on the loss of individuality in contemporary society. Today, his work is part of major collections of international modern art, such as the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, and the Art Institute of Chicago.