Jorge Vidal Ponce

JORGE VIDAL PONCE (Valparaíso, Chile, 1943 – Valladolid, 2006).
Untitled, 1988.
Oil on canvas.
There is a tear in the lower right center.
Signed and dated in the lower right corner and stamped with the artist’s seal on the reverse.
Measurements: 89 x 116 cm; 91 x 118 cm (frame).
Born in Chile, Jorge Vidal moved to Europe as a young man to begin his artistic training in Geneva. His first major exhibitions took place in Valladolid during the 1960s, a city with which he forged a close bond and where he took up permanent residence in 1975, after going into exile following the coup d’état against Salvador Allende in 1973. Deeply connected to Castile and León, he spent his entire artistic career there and established himself as one of the key figures in the renewal of abstract painting in the region. His work, characterized by a visual language of great sensitivity and formal rigor, occupies a prominent place within Spanish abstraction of the second half of the 20th century. Vidal was one of the leading members of the Simancas Group, an artistic collective that formed around the painter Fernando Santiago—known as “Jacobo”—and which played a decisive role in modernizing the Castilian art scene.
Throughout his career, he received major awards, including the Prize at the Second Barcelona Biennial of Contemporary Painting, the Valladolid National Painting Prize, and the Prize at the 6th “Ciudad de Zamora” Painting Biennial—awards that cemented his reputation as one of the most significant artists of his generation.