Helena Almeida: 'Seduzir' [To Seduce, 2002] (detail)

Collection

Bañista y playa blanca [Bather and White Beach]

Image caption
JOAQUÍN PACHECO

Bañista y playa blanca [Bather and White Beach]

  • 1990
  • Oil on canvas
  • 80,7 x 116,1 cm
  • Cat. P_485
  • Acquired in 1991
By:
Carlos Martín, María José Alonso

‘Art has to be near to life and life is an error, it is a succession of lights and shadows […].Relief painting lies to you.I prefer imperfections, those where you can see that you have overdone it or you have shied away’. These are the words of Joaquín Pacheco in 2004, a figurative artist and stalwart of the artistic scene. He overlapped with different generations – he was present at the Venice Biennial as early as 1958 - with explicit references and an obvious debt to early German expressionism, Francis Bacon and Edward Hopper. His link with the German avant-garde from the turn of the century, which broke the mould of bourgeois taste,became clear from his exhibition along with the self-proclaimed ‘expressionist group’ in 1962. The works in the Banco de España Collection date from Pancheco’s later period, from the 1980s onwards, and are a sort of summary of outstanding features recovered from his career.

 
By:
Roberto Díaz
Joaquín Pacheco
Madrid 1934

The painter Joaquín Pacheco works in a figurative style based on realism, but with metaphysical and expressionist nuances that he developed from the end of the 1950s. He started studying Philosophy and Literature, but gave up and took up painting, where he was highly influenced by the work of Francis Bacon, Richard Linder and Edward Hopper. In the 1960s and 1970s he lived in Paris, where he visited the main museums of the city, which would later be the subjects of some of his works. His painting, based on observing daily life, mainly in the urban setting, is concise in form. His compositions play with the double image, reflection, shadows and silhouettes, as plastic expressions of memory, with which he experiments in recurrent themes such as beach scenes, shop windows, landscapes or sidewalk cafés, places that Pacheco depicts with certain aspects that recall metaphysical painting.

Pacheco was awarded a grant by the Juan March Foundation in 1967 and the Grant for Artistic Creation from the Spanish Ministry of Culture. He has also taken part in events such as the Venice Biennale (1958). Since his first solo show at the Abril Gallery (Madrid, 1956), he has regularly exhibited at galleries in Madrid, Paris and New York. Special mention should be made of the shows organised by the Fine Arts General Directorate at the National Library (Madrid, 1967); La Casa del Siglo XV art gallery (Segovia, 1978) and the travelling exhibition of the Caja de Ahorros de Salamanca (1990) that was taken to Valladolid, Ávila, Palencia and Zamora. He has taken part in group exhibitions including ‘Grupo expresionista’ [‘Expressionist Group’], at the Biosca Gallery (Madrid, 1960), and at centres such as the City of Paris Museum of Modern Art (Paris, 1961); the Conde Duque Cultural Centre (Madrid (1983 and 1985); and the Telefónica Exhibition Centre (Madrid, 1996).

Roberto Díaz

 
 
Vv.Aa. Colección Banco de España. Catálogo razonado, Madrid, Banco de España, 2019, vol. 3.