Josep Guinovart

JOSEP GUINOVART BERTRAN (Barcelona, 1927 - 2007).
Untitled. 1976
Engraving adhered to wood intervened, P/T copy.
Signed and dated by hand.
Measurements: 57 x 79 cm.

This work by Josep Guinovart delves into the line of research that the artist developed in the mid-seventies, when the engraving ceases to be a flat image to become a constructed object. The original engraving, adhered to wood and later intervened, is fragmented into multiple irregular fields that are contained by a black slatted structure, conceived as an architectural framework that organizes and, at the same time, tensions the image.

The composition adopts a dynamic and asymmetrical rhythm, close to an urban plan or a contemporary stained glass window, in which figurative fragments -mainly female body forms, sensual and fragmented- coexist with black gestural stains, nervous lines and areas of flat color. The pink, ochre, earth, muted green and red tones reinforce the carnal and vitalistic dimension of the work, while the irruptions of black act as signs of rupture, censorship or emotional intensity.

The fragmentation of the body, never fully described, refers to a non-narrative eroticism, closer to evocation and impulse than to literal representation. Guinovart thus articulates a constant dialogue between desire, memory and matter, where each compartment functions as a vestige or a trace, and the whole is perceived as an accumulation of instants.

Josep Guinovart is represented in the Museums of Contemporary Art in Barcelona, Madrid and Mexico City, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, the Museo de Bellas Artes in Bilbao, the Museo San Telmo in San Sebastián, the Museo Eusebio Sempere in Alicante, the Museo de Navarra in Tafalla, the Casa de las Américas in Havana, the Bocchum Museum in Germany, the Museo de Bellas Artes in Long Island, New York, and the Museo Patio Herreriano in Valladolid.