As a painter, academic and art essayist, Juan Antonio Aguirre was one of the leading figures of Spanish art in the 1970s and 1980s. He was the driving force behind the reviving of the pictorial genre in Spain and the break from the principles of Informalism. He studied Philosophy and Psychology at the Complutense University of Madrid and attended the Madrid Central School of Arts and Crafts. In the mid-1960s he started to show his paintings and embarked on a career as a curator and director at the Amadis Gallery (Madrid), where he exhibited the work of peers who included Carlos Alcolea, Carlos Franco and Luis Gordillo. His pictorial work began with a figurative style bordering on the Naïve, which he turned his back on at the end of the 1960s when he moved to geometric abstraction. Yet it would be after re-examining the paintings of Henri Matisse, Pierre Bonnard and Edvard Munch that he shaped what was to be his characteristic style, constructing colour to show an Expressionist influence. He applied paint using flowing, wavy strokes, depicting everyday scenes, landscapes and portraits with references to personal experiences. He developed this style over the following decades.
He is also noted for his work as an academic and essayist with the publication of Arte último in 1969 and in cultural management as the deputy director of the Madrid Museum of Modern Art from 1982 to 1986. His work has been shown in leading group exhibitions such as ‘New Generation.1967-1977’ at the Velázquez Palace exhibition hall of the Reina Sofía Museum (Madrid, 1977) and ‘Madrid D. F.’, at Madrid Municipal Museum (1980). A highlight of his solo shows is the retrospective of his work at the Valencia Institute of Modern Art (IVAM) (Valencia, 1999).
As a painter, academic and art essayist, Juan Antonio Aguirre was one of the leading figures of Spanish art in the 1970s and 1980s. He was the driving force behind the reviving of the pictorial genre in Spain and the break from the principles of Informalism. He studied Philosophy and Psychology at the Complutense University of Madrid and attended the Madrid Central School of Arts and Crafts. In the mid-1960s he started to show his paintings and embarked on a career as a curator and director at the Amadis Gallery (Madrid), where he exhibited the work of peers who included Carlos Alcolea, Carlos Franco and Luis Gordillo. His pictorial work began with a figurative style bordering on the Naïve, which he turned his back on at the end of the 1960s when he moved to geometric abstraction. Yet it would be after re-examining the paintings of Henri Matisse, Pierre Bonnard and Edvard Munch that he shaped what was to be his characteristic style, constructing colour to show an Expressionist influence. He applied paint using flowing, wavy strokes, depicting everyday scenes, landscapes and portraits with references to personal experiences. He developed this style over the following decades.
He is also noted for his work as an academic and essayist with the publication of Arte último in 1969 and in cultural management as the deputy director of the Madrid Museum of Modern Art from 1982 to 1986. His work has been shown in leading group exhibitions such as ‘New Generation.1967-1977’ at the Velázquez Palace exhibition hall of the Reina Sofía Museum (Madrid, 1977) and ‘Madrid D. F.’, at Madrid Municipal Museum (1980). A highlight of his solo shows is the retrospective of his work at the Valencia Institute of Modern Art (IVAM) (Valencia, 1999).