José María Sicilia

JOSÉ MARÍA SICILIA (Madrid, 1954).
"Manuscript of Sanlúcar de Barrameda VI".
Hand-illuminated lithography and varnish, copy 6/15
Signed and justified by hand.
Measurements: 57,5 x 77 cm.
Sicilia began his studies at the School of Fine Arts in Madrid, although in 1980 he abandoned them and moved to live in Paris. Two years later he presented his first individual exhibition, in a style in line with the neo-expressionism then fashionable in Europe. It was in the mid-eighties that his work achieved great national and international renown. In 1986 he presented a group of works at the Blum Helman Gallery in New York which showed a strong purification of his previous style, towards an abstract painting in which he progressively eliminated any formal reference. In the 1990s this reductionist aesthetic affected the chromatic range, the forms being suggested by the reflection of light on the surface. A new material treatment with a subtle poetic resonance, based on waxes that slightly reveal floral themes, brings colour back to an already fully consecrated work. José María Sicilia has been awarded the Premio Nacional de Artes Plásticas (1989), and is represented in the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid, the MOMA and the Guggenheim in New York and the CAPC in Bordeaux, among many other art centres and museums.