Josep Guinovart

JOSEP GUINOVART BERTRAN (Barcelona, 1927 - 2007).
Untitled. 1975.
Intervened engraving (collage with sand, canvas and paint).
Signed and dated by hand.

Measurements: 54 x 60 cm; 58 x 64.5 cm (frame).

Hand signed and dated 1975, this piece exemplifies the artist's moment of full maturity, when his abstract-expressive language reaches an intense physical, symbolic and existential charge, placing the work on the border between engraving, collage and expanded painting.

The work is part of the most characteristic core of his production of the seventies, when the artist turns engraving into a field of material and symbolic experimentation, integrating poor and natural elements to give the image a physical and telluric dimension.

The composition is articulated in clearly differentiated horizontal strips. In the upper part, a layer of real sand adhered to the support forms a compact and rough mass that evokes earth, eroded landscape or geological stratum, one of Guinovart's great conceptual axes. This strip acts as a visual weight that seems to oppress the whole, reinforcing the sensation of gravity and rootedness. Below it emerges the intervened engraving, where nervous and gestural lines are combined with black spots and intense red accents, creating a tension between drawing and matter. In the center, a geometric checkered red and white motif stands out, introducing a rational and constructive counterpoint within the organic chaos of lines and textures, which can be read as a symbolic allusion to order, territory or identity.

Josep Guinovart is represented in the Museums of Contemporary Art in Barcelona, Madrid and Mexico City, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, the Museo de Bellas Artes in Bilbao, the Museo San Telmo in San Sebastián, the Museo Eusebio Sempere in Alicante, the Museo de Navarra in Tafalla, the Casa de las Américas in Havana, the Bocchum Museum in Germany, the Museo de Bellas Artes in Long Island, New York, and the Museo Patio Herreriano in Valladolid.