Carmen Calvo

CARMEN CALVO (Valencia, 1950).
"Bonne pensé du matin", 1999.
Mixed media and collage on canvas.
Attached certificate of authenticity issued by the gallery La Ribera (Murcia).
Presents stamp on the back of the Gallery La Ribera (Murcia) and informative label of the Ramis Barquet Gallery (New York).
Signed, titled and dated on the back.
Measurements: 100 x 100 cm; 115 x 115 cm (frame).
The work Bonne pensé du matin (1999) by Carmen Calvo is a paradigmatic example of the visual and conceptual language that characterizes the career of this artist, one of the most relevant figures of Spanish contemporary art since the end of the 20th century.
In this piece, Calvo builds a complex and stratified composition from diverse materials, papers, photographs, drawings, found objects and three-dimensional elements, organized on a common support. The arrangement of these fragments evokes the aesthetics of the archive or the notebook, where the artist superimposes layers of memory, language and experience.
The result is a sort of emotional cartography, where objects and images dialogue with each other, generating a tension between the intimate and the public, the real and the symbolic.
Carmen Calvo studied at the Schools of Arts and Crafts and Fine Arts in Valencia, and graduated in advertising in 1970. She would later broaden her training thanks to scholarships from the Ministry of Culture (1980), the Casa de Velázquez in Madrid (1983-85) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for her residence in Paris (1985-92). During these years Calvo began to be recognized, receiving distinctions such as the I LaSalle Seiko Painting Prize of Barcelona (1985), the Alfons Roig of the Diputación Valenciana (1989), a scholarship in the I Biennial Martínez Guerricabeitia of the University of Valencia (1989), and the selection for the XLVII Biennial of Venice (1997). The artist had begun her exhibition activity in 1969, taking part in a group show held at the Círculo Universitario de Valencia. She made her individual debut in 1976 at the Temps gallery in her native city, and since then she has shown her work individually in various cities in Spain and the United States, as well as in other countries in Europe, America and Africa. Works by Carmen Calvo can currently be seen in art institutions, museums and private collections all over the world, including the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Reina Sofia in Madrid, the Marugame Hirai in Kobe, the MACBA in Barcelona, the Fonds National d'Art Contemporain in Paris, the IVAM in Valencia, the Chase Manhattan Bank collection in New York, etc.