Joan Hernández Pijuan

JOAN HERNÁNDEZ PIJUAN (Barcelona, 1931-2005).
"God is going to be born".
Mixed media on paper.
Signed and dated in the lower right corner.
Presents faults in the frame.
Measurements: 99 x 69 cm; 103 x 73 cm (frame).

Composition structured in four vignettes, where Hernández Pijuan combines line, stain and written word in a work of great symbolic load. The barely insinuated forms, the wide empty spaces and the brief handwritten phrases in red build a sequence of intimate and reflective tone, close to the visual poem.

The work belongs to an early stage of the artist, in which figuration is being refined towards an increasingly essential language. In contrast to the material density of other pieces of these years, here an extreme economy of means dominates: black lines, dark spots, a blue brushstroke in the last frame and the presence of text as a plastic and conceptual element.

Hernández Pijuan was a key figure in Catalan painting in the second half of the 20th century. Trained in Barcelona and Paris, he developed a career marked by the progressive formal reduction, the interest in space, the memory of the landscape and the intensity of the pictorial sign. His work is represented in institutions such as the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, the MACBA and the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya.