Rafael Canogar

RAFAEL CANOGAR (Toledo, 1935).
Untitled, 1959.
Oil on canvas.
Work reproduced in the Catalogue Raisonné (No. 1959-061).
Presents informative labels on the back (Internationale Malerei 1960-61, Wolframs-Eschenbach and Galerie 59, Aschaffenburg).
Has faults in the frame.
Signed and dated in the lower left corner. Signed and dated on the back.
Measurements: 73,5 x 60 cm.
The expressive use of the pictorial matter turns the surface into an eroded, almost geological terrain, full of dense textures, cracks and vertical striations. These forms evoke a devastated landscape - the brushstroke is not visible in the traditional sense; what dominates here is the material gesture, a direct action on the support. In this painting, Canogar does not represent, but builds and destroys simultaneously, in a logic of deconstruction of the pictorial space. There is a sensation of collapse, of internal tension that seems about to explode towards the spectator.
This work belongs to the last years of the El Paso Group, founded in 1957 by artists such as Antonio Saura, Manolo Millares, Luis Feito, and Canogar himself. The collective's purpose was to renew Spanish art from a committed attitude, combating official academicism and seeking an existential, almost spiritual expression through abstraction.
In 1959, the year of this painting, the group was reaching its maximum international projection, participating in exhibitions abroad and consolidating informalism as the language of the avant-garde in Spain.
Canogar's work at this stage reflects a material painting, not decorative or complacent, but tense, torn, full of contained energy. He moves away from traditional figuration to explore a new abstract language where matter becomes the protagonist.
Co-founder of the group "El Paso" in 1957, during the fifties he developed a fully informalist work, which drifts during the sixties in a complex figuration increasingly narrative. In the sixties he achieved international recognition as a guest professor at Milles College in California to teach the art course 1965-66, and as a guest artist at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles in 1969. Also, between 1972 and 1974 he was invited by the D.A.A.D. in Berlin as an artist in residence. During his mature stage, from 1975 onwards, Canogar invents a new iconography, his own and personal, which he expresses through the mask, the head, the face, as a representation of the man who loses his individuality and becomes a plastic sign. His work will also be recognized in Spain, and during the eighties he will be a member of the Advisory Council of the General Directorate of Fine Arts of the Ministry of Culture, of the Board of Trustees of the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Madrid, and a member of the Board of Directors of the National Heritage. Throughout his career, Canogar has held countless solo and group exhibitions. Among the personal exhibitions, several have been retrospectives, among others: Museo Nacional de Arte Contemporáneo and Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid, Museo de Arte Moderno de la Villa de Paris, Sonia Heine Foundation in Oslo, Konsthalle de Lund in Sweden, Paris Art Center, Bochum Art Museum in Germany, Istituto di Storia dell'Arte de Parma, Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, Fundación Casa del Cordón de Burgos, Museo de Santa Cruz de Toledo, Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid, etc.