Isabel Baquedano

ISABEL BAQUEDANO (Navarra, 1929- Madrid, 2018).
Untitled.
Oil on canvas.
Presents damage to the frame.
Signed in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 65 x 116 cm; 88 x 138 cm (frame).
Isabel Baquedano was an outstanding Spanish plastic artist whose work is inscribed in the field of contemporary figuration. Considered one of the most influential creators of her region, she developed a sustained and profound artistic career, characterized by a constant visual reflection on the human condition, the city and the symbolic imaginary.
Her childhood was marked by the difficulties of the post-war period and the early loss of her father, circumstances that led her family to settle in Zaragoza. From a very early age he showed an inclination for artistic practice, which later led him to move to Madrid with his mother and sister to continue his education. He entered the San Fernando School of Fine Arts, where he completed his studies in 1957. That same year she was appointed drawing teacher at the School of Arts and Crafts of Pamplona, a position she held until her retirement. Her presence in that institution was decisive in the configuration of what became known as the Pamplona School, a renovating movement that she promoted, together with figures such as José María Ascunce and Gerardo Sacristán, and which influenced later generations of artists, among them Juan José Aquerreta.
Since the sixties, his work began to consolidate in the national artistic scene. In 1963 he presented a series of realistic works at the Atril gallery in Madrid, which attracted the attention of critics. Throughout the following decades, his compositions evolved towards a figuration charged with lyricism and melancholy, mainly focused on the urban landscape. In these works, the city appears as a symbolic, almost dreamlike space, where isolated human figures evoke a profound sense of loneliness. The treatment of light, the sobriety of the chromatic palette and the precision of the framing contribute to create an atmosphere of suspended silence between the real and the imaginary.
Towards the last stages of his career, Baquedano incorporated references to religious and mythological iconography, reworked from a personal, poetic and silent point of view. These works stand out for their serene intensity, far from any narrative grandiloquence.
His work is part of important public collections, such as those of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, the Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, the IVAM of Valencia and the Museo de Navarra, among others. Likewise, his inclusion in relevant institutional exhibitions, such as the one commemorating the bicentennial of the Prado Museum in 2019, evidences the recognition of his contribution to Spanish contemporary art. She is also credited with being the first painter from Navarre to be represented in both the Prado Museum and the Reina Sofía.
Baquedano conceived artistic creation as an eminently intuitive process, guided more by internal search than by previous planning. According to his own words, the creative process emerged during the elaboration of the work, as a form of discovery, without initial certainties, and always mediated by the need to find an aesthetic truth in the very act of painting.
Among his numerous collective participations, it is worth mentioning his presence in the exhibition Imágenes de la Abstracción held in 1999 at the former Spanish Museum of Contemporary Art (MEAC) in Madrid, which brought together proposals that dialogued with the abstract language from multiple approaches.