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

Collection

Gran barrera de maleza al sol [Large Barrier of Undergrowth in the Sun]

Image caption
MARTA CÁRDENAS

Gran barrera de maleza al sol [Large Barrier of Undergrowth in the Sun]

  • 1990
  • Oil on canvas (Triptych)
  • 97,5 x 130 cm each
  • Cat. P_503
  • Acquired in 1991
By:
Beatriz Herráez

Large Barrier of Undergrowth in the Sun is an abstract landscape, dominated by warm, light tones. The scene is only 'interrupted' by some occasional green and blue brushstrokes across the surface of the canvas. The painting reflects the importance Cárdenas attaches to colour and nature and her extraordinary ability to handle abstract forms. She incorporates a vocabulary of signs into her pictures as barely perceptible signs, showing parallels with oriental calligraphy.

According to the text accompanying a major retrospective of her work organized by the Kutxa Foundation in Donostia/San Sebastián in 2016, entitled 'Abre los ojos' ['Open Your Eyes'], the turning point in the artist's career came in 1979, which 'the painter traditionally views as being the moment when she moved outdoors'. It was during this period that she first began to work outside the confines of the studio, painting her canvases in the open air. According to the same text, another key moment in the artist's development came in the mid-1990s, when she went on a trip that was to have a major impact on her exploration of colour. Following this experience Marta Cárdenas 'abandoned her characteristically rapid, gestural brush stroke'. Whereas her early work was largely figurative —with plenty of self-portraits and views of interiors— by the 1990s, with paintings such as this triptych Large Barrier of Undergrowth in the Sun, we see a transition towards a fragile, subjective language that adopts some of the traditions and themes to be seen in the work of other painters; for example, the intense luminosity of the Mediterranean landscapes, which have always greatly interested her. As the artist herself says, these 'rediscoveries' arose out of her experiments with different pictorial techniques to create her own particular 'sensory landscapes'.

Beatriz Herráez

 
By:
Roberto Díaz
Marta Cárdenas
Donostia / San Sebastian 1944

Marta Cárdenas began her artistic career as a self-taught landscape painter but went on to attend drawing classes at the Artistic Association of Gipuzkoa. In 1963, she enrolled in the Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, graduating in 1968. During this period, she came into contact with Madrid's avant-garde movement. She also spent time in Paris in 1969 with a scholarship from the French government. Her work from the late 1960s and the 1970s centres on intimate portraits and interiors in dark and austere tones, which are reminiscent of the work of Giorgio Morandi. From 1979 on, she began to paint exteriors, in landscapes that synthesise the forms of nature and reproduce its colours. Some of her paintings from this period recall the later work of Claude Monet, with certain expressionist elements in the brushstrokes. During the 1990s, she gradually moved towards an even greater synthesis of shape, sometimes to the point of abstraction. Following a trip to India in 1996, she also began to introduce oriental elements, featuring dynamic graphics, linear elements and colour planes, all of which is still present in her work.

Since the 1960s, her work has been shown in numerous exhibitions at galleries in the Basque Country and Madrid. She has also featured in shows at the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian (Lisbon, 1985); the Bilbao-Bizkaia Kutxa Foundation (Bilbao, 1995); the Koldo Mitxelena Kulturunea (Donostia/San Sebastián, 2004); and more recently in a retrospective of her work at the Kursaal (Donostia/San Sebastián, 2016). She has also taken part in some important group exhibitions, including the XI Salón de los 16, at the Museum of Contemporary Art (Madrid, 1983), and 'Mujeres en el arte español' [Women in Spanish Art'], at the Conde Duque Centre (Madrid, 1984). In 1980 she was awarded a scholarship from the Juan March Foundation.

Roberto Díaz

 
«International Festival of Contemporary Art» (Madrid, 1991).
Vv.Aa. Arco 91. Feria Internacional de Arte Contemporáneo, Madrid, Arco, 1991. Vv.Aa. Colección Banco de España. Catálogo razonado, Madrid, Banco de España, 2019, Vol. 2.