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

Collection

Hércules en el Peñón [Hercules on the Rock]

Image caption
GUILLERMO PÉREZ VILLALTA

Hércules en el Peñón [Hercules on the Rock]

  • 1986
  • Oil on canvas
  • 46,5 x 38,5 cm
  • Cat. P_778
  • Acquired in 2013
By:
Beatriz Herráez

Hercules on the Rock (1986) is a canvas dated just a year after Guillermo Pérez Villalta became the youngest winner in the history of the National Award for Plastic Arts.

The painting features the mythological figure of Hercules, a frequent character in his oeuvre, to whom he returned later, for example, in his work for the Andalusia Pavilion for the Seville Expo ’92 (a large mural on the roof of the pavilion, where Pérez Villalta depicted the twelve labours of the hero along with the signs of the Zodiac). Hercules on the Rock is also a portrait where many of Pérez Villalta’s interests converge, in particular his personal, fantastic cosmogony populated by allegorical figures.  The work also has autobiographical aspects: specifically, the painting is ‘located’ on the Rock of Gibraltar, near La Línea de la Concepción, where the artist lived as a child, and not far from his town of birth Tarifa.  It is a painting constructed on thought, a painting of concepts and emotion, where the artist is ‘within the work’.

Pérez Villalta’s early output cannot be separated from his expertise in areas as diverse as history, literature, architecture and mythology or from his embracing of popular culture. His work thus provides an unexpected journey from the canons of classicism to the recognition of ‘indigenous’ styles that he calls ‘neo-modern’, ‘more modern than the modern’. An example can be found in the ‘style’ of the buildings along the Costal del Sol, a contextual counterpoint to the eclectic, internal style of post-modernity into which his oeuvre falls.

In 2003 Guillermo Pérez Villalta donated much of his work to the Andalusia Contemporary Art Centre (CAAC) in Seville.

Beatriz Herráez

 
By:
Beatriz Herráez
Guillermo Pérez Villalta
Tarifa (Cadiz) 1948

After starting to study Architecture in Madrid, Guillermo Pérez Villalta switched to History of Art, and travelled to and spent time in cities such as Paris and Rome. From the 1970s on, his name was linked to Carlos Alcolea, Carlos Franco and Rafael Pérez-Mínguez, who were key artists in the new Madrid figurative art movement. Their work was shown in group exhibitions organised at Sala Amadís, the gallery run by Juan Antonio Aguirre at that time, where they called for a return to figurative painting. One of the leading lights in the movement was Luis Gordillo.

History, mythology, architecture, design, a study of human anatomy, geometry and perspective are some of the sources that can be found in Pérez Villalta’s oeuvre. From his return to Italian classicism, metaphysical painting and the Spanish Baroque to his interest in figures such as Jacques-Louis David, Salvador Dalí and Giorgio Morandi, Pérez Villalta’s work is a ‘painting of ideas’.

His allegories are drawn from a rather unusual wealth of iconography. Apart from the ‘pleasure of painting’, they bear witness to an era, to a generation that he captured masterfully. Pérez Villalta painted Group of People in an Atrium or Allegory of Art and Life or of the Present and the Future (1975-1976), where he portrayed Juan Antonio Aguirre and Luis Gordillo, Chema Cobo, Manuel Quejido, Herminio Molero and himself, among others; and Scene. Figures Leaving a Rock Concert (1979), with the members of the bands Kaka de Luxe and The Zombies, fellow travellers in other settings of Spanish ‘modernity’ such as the TV programme La edad de oro, in the first episode of which Paloma Chamorro devoted an important spot to the artist.  These were ‘historic times’ that Pérez Villalta recorded as a chronicler, including autobiography as a fundamental resource when producing his works, in his ‘life painting’.

Pérez Villalta received the National Award for Plastic Arts in 1985. His latest solo shows include an anthology at the ICO Museum (Madrid, 2008); at the Andalusia Contemporary Art Centre (Seville, 2015); at the Rafael Ortiz Gallery (Seville, 2013); and at the Fernández-Braso Gallery (Madrid, 2014).

Beatriz Herráez

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