Josep Guinovart

JOSEP GUINOVART BERTRAN (Barcelona, 1927 - 2007).
Untitled. 1975
Intervened engraving (mirror, sand and pencil), P/T copy.
Signed, justified and dated by hand.
Measurements: 36 x 31 cm; 40 x 35 cm (frame).

This work by Josep Guinovart is fully inscribed in his mature research on matter, sign and symbolic space, characteristic of his production in the seventies.

The composition is articulated from a vertical and frontal structure, dominated by a large horizontal rectangle with a mirrored or grayish surface, framed by a strip of sand that introduces a telluric, almost architectural dimension. This upper element acts as a space of silence or reflection, open to the visual participation of the spectator, who is literally incorporated into the work. Below it, a dark block engraved with dense and nervous wefts provides weight, tension and a sense of rootedness, as if it were a lower, organic and terrestrial stratum.

The use of real sand reinforces Guinovart's link with the primary and the rural, with the earth understood not as landscape but as living matter and memory. The mirror, for its part, introduces a conceptual dimension linked to identity, perception and the present time, expanding the symbolic field of the work beyond the pictorial surface.

Josep Guinovart is represented in the Museums of Contemporary Art in Barcelona, Madrid and Mexico City, the Museo de Escultura al Aire Libre de Santa Cruz de Tenerife, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, the Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, the Museo San Telmo de 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 de Long Island, New York, and the Museo Patio Herreriano in Valladolid.