José María Sicilia

JOSÉ MARÍA SICILIA (Madrid, 1954).
"The manuscript of Jaén", 1996.
Mixed media (wax and paper).
Provenance: Manuel Ojeda Gallery.
Measurements: 25 x 17 cm; 36 x 28 x 6 cm (frame).

Sicilia begins his studies in the School of Fine Arts of Madrid, although in 1980 he abandons them and moves to live in Paris. Two years later he presented his first solo exhibition, in a style in line with the neo-expressionism then fashionable in Europe. It will be in the mid-eighties when his work reaches a great national and international projection. In 1986 he presents at the Blum Helman Gallery in New York a group of works that shows a strong purification of the previous style, towards an abstract painting in which he will progressively eliminate any formal reference. In the nineties this reductionist aesthetic will affect the chromatic range, leaving the forms suggested by the reflection of light on the surface. A new material treatment of subtle poetic resonance, based on waxes that let floral themes slightly transparent, brings color back to an already fully consecrated work. José María Sicilia has been awarded the National Prize for Plastic Arts (1989), and is represented in the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid, the MOMA and the Guggenheim in New York and the CAPC in Bordeaux, among many other art centers and museums.