Rafael Canogar

RAFAEL CANOGAR (Toledo, 1935).
"Colima".
Engraving and collage, copy 12/50.
Signed and justified by hand.
Measurements: 80 x 61 cm.
Rafael Canogar trained with the painter Daniel Vázquez Díaz between 1949 and 1954. During these years he worked along the lines of the avant-garde, soon entering the path of abstraction. Co-founder of the group “El Paso” in 1957, during the 1950s he developed a completely informalist work, which in the 1960s led to a complex figuration that was increasingly narrative. From the sixties he achieved international recognition as a guest professor at Milles College in California to teach the art course 1965-66, and as a guest artist at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop institution in Los Angeles in 1969. Likewise, between 1972 and 1974 he was invited by the D.A.A.D. from Berlin as resident artist. During his stage of maturity, starting in 1975, Canogar invents a new iconography, his own and personal, which he expresses through the mask, the head, the face, as a representation of the man who loses his individuality and becomes plastic sign. His work will also be recognized in Spain, and during the eighties he will be a member of the Advisory Council of the General Directorate of Fine Arts of the Ministry of Culture, of the Board of Trustees of the National Museum of Contemporary Art of Madrid, and a member of the Administration Council of the National Heritage . Throughout his career, Canogar has held countless exhibitions, both individual and group.