Juan Genovés

JUAN GENOVÉS (Valencia, 1930-Madrid, 2020).
"Acronía", 2017.
Giclée intervened by hand by the artist, copy 10/10.
Edition limited to 10, being each copy unique.
Signed and justified by hand.
With label on the back of the Marlborough Gallery.
Measurements: 74 x 60 cm.

A late work by Juan Genovés that synthesizes in an exemplary way his unmistakable visual language centered on the representation of the multitude as a collective subject. In Acronía, the artist displays an apparently open and unhierarchical scene, where small dispersed figures move over a wide chromatic field, generating a tension between the individual and the mass, order and chaos.

The use of giclée intervened by hand reinforces the hybrid character of the work, halfway between the serial and the unique, allowing Genovés to reintroduce the pictorial gesture in each piece. The figures, treated with a very refined formal synthesis, nevertheless retain a strong narrative charge, suggesting displacements, encounters and social dynamics typical of contemporary life.

The background, resolved in gradations of greens and yellows, acts as an almost abstract space that enhances the sensation of isolation and temporal simultaneity - alluding to the very concept of "acronyms" - where there is no clear vanishing point or linear narrative.

It is a very representative work of Genovés' last period, highly valued by collectors for its ability to condense the central concerns of his entire career.

Juan Genovés, a key figure in Spanish social-critical realism, developed a body of work centered on the representation of the multitude as a metaphor for contemporary tensions. Trained in Valencia and with an international projection since the sixties, his work is present in institutions such as the IVAM, the Reina Sofia Museum, the MoMA in New York and the National Center of Contemporary Art in Paris.