Miguel Ángel Campano

MIGUEL ÁNGEL CAMPANO (Madrid, 1948 – Cercedilla, Madrid, 2018)
Untitled, 2001.
Collage on paper.
Signed and dated.
Measurements: 27.5 x 20 cm.

In this collage, Miguel Ángel Campano constructs an image of great material intensity from a fragment of crumpled paper, altered with pink strokes and arranged against a dark background. The irregularity of the cutout, the folds, and the traces of manipulation give the work an almost object-like presence, somewhere between painting, relief, and found objects.

The piece reflects the importance paper held within Campano’s career, understood as a space for trial, freedom, and experimentation. Using minimal means, the artist activates essential tensions within his artistic language: background and figure, chance and composition, fragility and gestural energy.

Miguel Ángel Campano was a key figure in the renewal of Spanish painting during the 1970s and 1980s. His work consistently explored the relationships between abstraction and figuration, modern tradition and personal language, with references to Cézanne, Poussin, Delacroix, José Guerrero, and American abstraction.

In 1996, he received the National Prize for the Visual Arts. The Reina Sofía Museum dedicated a major retrospective to him in 1999, and in 2019, the exhibition *Miguel Ángel Campano. D’après. His work is represented in the Reina Sofía Museum, the IVAM, the Museum of Spanish Abstract Art in Cuenca, the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, ARTIUM, the Centre Pompidou, and the Bank of Spain Collection, among other institutions.