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

Collection

Études 10, 11 y 12 Debussy [Études 10, 11 and 12 Debussy]

Image caption
NICO MUNUERA

Études 10, 11 y 12 Debussy [Études 10, 11 and 12 Debussy]

  • 2002
  • Synthetic paint on canvas (muslin) on board (plywood) (Triptych)
  • 160 x 390 cm
  • Cat. P_702
  • Acquired in 2004
By:
Jorge Pallarés

Debussy described his Douze Études as 'a warning to pianists not to take up the musical profession unless they have remarkable hands'. In this series, Munuera seeks to establish a parallel with the Études, challenging himself to display his skill, developing twelve independent pieces that somehow form a single whole. The theme is conveyed through the musical, rhythmic nature of the project.

Études 10, 11 and 12, three canvases of elegant simplicity and delicacy, give an idea of the immense breadth of his work. His use of black, green and white give a hint of one of his clearest references, Mark Rothko's black paintings. However, whereas in Rothko, the tension between the different colour fields is palpable, in Munuera's, they coexist harmoniously, in an apparently endless motion — even though the end is precisely the origin of its existence.

Jorge Pallarés

 
By:
Beatriz Herráez
Nico Munuera
Lorca (Murcia) 1974

One of the key issues Nico Munuera addresses in his work is the contrast between craftsmanship (traditional materials and techniques) and industrial manufacture (mass production and the reproducibility of the image). His work needs to be examined calmly and unhurriedly, with attention to details, albeit this is not the way the details are reproduced in his images. Munuera constructs geographies and landscapes through the superimposition of colour fields that question the viewer in an experience that offers no guarantee of certainty.

In his most recent pieces he has abandoned the large surfaces of white paint, ripped across by coloured brushstrokes, that were seen in previous series — such as those in the exhibition 'My Ross Island' (2011). Instead, he uses a wider range of colours to 'take us to that recurring physical and interior enclave inhabited by the artist', as the new departure of his exhibition 'Isla de Boneless' ['Boneless Island'] (2016) has been defined. In the earlier series, Munuera used photographs of Ross Island, in the Antarctic, taken over a century ago, as the basis for his pictorial investigations. From there to this second islet, built from fragments of a more intimate observation, Munuera has undergone a journey that exhaustively explores the possibilities of the discipline.

Nico Munuera has exhibited regularly at Galería Max Estrella and La Caja Negra n Madrid and at Galería Rafael Ortiz in Seville. Among other scholarships and awards, he received the CAM Artistic Creation Scholarship in Berlin (2011) and the Fine Arts Scholarship from the Colegio de España in Paris (2003). His work has been featured in group exhibitions at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini (Venice, Italy, 2015); the Contemporary Art Centre of Malaga (2015); and the Instituto Cervantes in Munich (2014).

Beatriz Herráez

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