Joan Hernández Pijuan

JOAN HERNÁNDEZ PIJUAN, (Barcelona, 1931 - 2005).
"Blue showcase", 1965.
Oil on canvas.
Signed and dated in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 162 x 130 cm.

This painting is a representative example of the first stage of Joan Hernández Pijuan, deeply influenced by the material informalism, focusing on the expressiveness of the pictorial matter itself. The composition is dominated by a powerful contrast between a dark, almost black background and a central white form that creates a visual tension. It evokes a half-formed silhouette, with slightly zoomorphic features. The use of such a reduced palette (white, black and subtle ochre) concentrates all the viewer's attention on texture and gesture. Pijuan explores here a poetics of the primordial.

Joan Hernández Pijuan began his training in Barcelona, attending the La Lonja and Sant Jordi Schools of Fine Arts, and then completed his education at the School of Fine Arts in Paris. Appointed professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Barcelona in 1981, Hernández Pijuan occupies a singular position among the Spanish artists of the last decades. The strength of his creative individuality places him at the margin of the successive dominant trends and fashions, but does not prevent us from recognizing in his work a profound identification with the aesthetic concerns of his time. Throughout his career he has produced paintings on canvas, works on paper and aquatint engravings, lithographs and other printmaking techniques. Hernández Pijuan began his career practicing a tragic expressionism of great social charge, and at this time he formed, along with the other members of the Sílex Group, the so-called Barcelona School. In the seventies he simplified his expression until he adopted a geometric and calculated figuration, a style that he left behind in the following decade to focus on informalism. His exhibition activity was as wide and diverse as his own artistic creation. Whether individually or in the company of other artists, Hernández Pijuan provoked an important impact in artistic circles around the world. In fact, the interest and fascination for this painter's career continues more than ever, and he is the subject of new exhibitions and public displays of his work. During his lifetime he exhibited individually in several Spanish cities as well as in Zurich, Milan, Johannesburg, Cologne, Geneva, New York, Paris and Osaka, among other cities around the world, and in 2003 an important retrospective exhibition was dedicated to him at the MACBA in Barcelona, which was later shown at the Musée d'Art et Histoire de Neuchatel (France), the Konsthalle de Malmö (Sweden) and the Galleria Comunale d'Arte Moderna in Bologna (Italy). Even after his death his work has continued to be shown internationally, as evidenced by the exhibitions dedicated to his work held at the Flowers Gallery in London (2006), the Cervantes Institutes in New York, Chicago and Lisbon (2007), the Museum of Spanish Abstract Art in Cuenca (2008), the Andres Thalmann Gallery in Zurich (2009), the Baukunst in Cologne (2010), the Altana Kulturstiftung in Bad Homburg (Germany, 2011) and the Museum of Modern Art in Moscow (2012), among many others. Hernández Pijuan was dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Barcelona, and in 2000 he was appointed academician of the Real Academia de San Fernando in Madrid. In 1981 he received the National Prize for Plastic Arts, in 1985 the Sant Jordi Cross and, in 2004, the City of Barcelona Award. He was also awarded the Prize of the General Directorate of Fine Arts at the National Exhibition of Alicante in 1957, the First Prize for Painting "Peintres Residents" in Paris (1958), the "Malibor" Prize at the Biennial of Engraving in Ljubljana (1965), the International Biennial of Engraving in Krakow (1966) and the prize of the editorial office "Vijesnik u Srijedu" in Zagreb (1970). Hernández Pijuán is represented at the MACBA, the Museum of Spanish Abstract Art in Cuenca, the Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Patio Herreriano Museum in Valladolid and the Basque Museum of Contemporary Art, as well as in foreign centers such as the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Liaunig (Austria), the Helsinki Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki, the Helsinki Museum of Fine Arts in Finland, the Helsinki Museum of Fine Arts in Finland and the Helsinki Museum of Contemporary Art in Finland, those of Contemporary Art of Helsinki and Luxembourg, the Kulturstiftung of Bad Homburg (Austria), the Yamaguchi Gallery of Osaka (Japan), the Palace of Fine Arts of Brussels, the National Gallery of Montreal, the Museum of Modern Art of Buenos Aires and the Sztuki Museum of Lodz (Poland).