Rafael Canogar

RAFAEL CANOGAR GÓMEZ (Toledo, 1935).
“Urban Fossil” (178.1), 1993.
Silkscreen print and acid on rock with nerine fossils, no. 51/75 (Edition of 75 + VIII PA).
Signed and numbered by hand
Printed at the BO 15 studio, Madrid.
No. 178 in the artist’s catalog raisonné.
Measurements: 60 x 45 cm; 80 x 65 cm (frame).

Rafael Canogar trained under the painter Daniel Vázquez Díaz between 1949 and 1954. During these years, he worked within the avant-garde movement, soon venturing into abstraction. A co-founder of the “El Paso” group in 1957, during the 1950s he developed a thoroughly informalist body of work, which evolved during the 1960s into a complex figurative style that became increasingly narrative. Beginning in the 1960s, he achieved international recognition as a visiting professor at Milles College in California, where he taught the 1965–66 art course, and as a guest artist at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles in 1969. He was also invited by the D.A.A.D. in Berlin to serve as an artist-in-residence from 1972 to 1974. During his mature period, beginning in 1975, Canogar developed a new, unique, and personal iconography, which he expressed through the mask, the head, and the face—as a representation of man losing his individuality and becoming a plastic sign. His work was also recognized in Spain, and during the 1980s he served as a member of the Advisory Council of the General Directorate of Fine Arts of the Ministry of Culture, on the Board of Trustees of the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Madrid, and as a member of the Board of Directors of National Heritage. Throughout his career, Canogar has held countless exhibitions, both solo and group shows. Among his solo exhibitions, several have been retrospectives, including those at the National Museum of Contemporary Art and the National Library in Madrid, the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris, the Sonia Heine Foundation in Oslo, the Konsthalle in Lund, Sweden, the Paris Art Center, the Bochum Art Museum in Germany, the Istituto di Storia dell’Arte in Parma, the Bilbao Museum of Fine Arts, the Casa del Cordón Foundation in Burgos, the Santa Cruz Museum in Toledo, and the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid, among others. Canogar has led various workshops and given countless lectures in various European and American countries, and has served on juries for international awards and biennials. He has also been awarded various prizes and honors, including the Grand Prize at the São Paulo Biennial (1971), the Grand Prize at the Sofia International Painting Triennial (1982), the National Prize for the Visual Arts in Madrid (1982), among others. He has also been named a Chevalier of the French Order of Arts and Letters, has received the Commendation of the Order of Isabella the Catholic, is a full member of the San Fernando Academy, and holds an honorary doctorate from the UNED. Canogar’s works are currently represented in the most prominent modern art collections around the world, including the Reina Sofía Museum, MoMA in New York, the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, the Rufino Tamayo Museum in Mexico, and the Art Institute of Chicago, among many others.