Luis Gordillo

LUIS GORDILLO (Seville, 1934).
“Worth a Ray Smith,” 1994.
Mixed media on paper.
Signed and dated in the lower right corner. Titled in the middle left.
Measurements: 24.5 x 22.5 cm; 57 x 54 cm (frame).
This piece reflects the artistic dialogue between Gordillo—a key figure in Spanish abstraction and new figuration—and Ray Smith, one of the most distinctive artists to emerge from the contemporary Mexican-American art scene. Far from presenting a conventional portrait, Gordillo constructs a free interpretation of Smith’s creative personality, reinterpreting it through his own visual vocabulary. The work incorporates some of the most characteristic elements of Gordillo’s oeuvre, such as organic forms, the so-called “cellular” elements, and a complex network of lines and structures that evoke mental, biological, and perceptual processes. The choice of Ray Smith as a reference is particularly significant. He is renowned for his hybrid and narrative compositions, in which references to surrealism, popular culture, the Mexican imagination, and the Western pictorial tradition converge.
Luis Gordillo is one of the leading figures in abstract art in Spain. Internationally renowned, he has been honored with the National Prize for Plastic Arts (1981), the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts (1996), the Gold Medal of the Círculo de Bellas Artes de Madrid (2004), the Velázquez Prize for the Visual Arts (2007), and the National Prize for Printmaking (2012). He has held solo exhibitions around the world, and his work is represented in the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid, MACBA in Barcelona, the Juan March Foundation, ARTIUM in Vitoria, the Patio Herreriano Museum in Valladolid, the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, the Folkwang Museum in Germany, and elsewhere.