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

Collection

La construcción de la torre [The Construction of the Tower]

Image caption
CURRO GONZÁLEZ

La construcción de la torre [The Construction of the Tower]

  • 1997
  • Oil and encaustic painting on wood (Diptych)
  • 288 x 122 x 5 cm
  • Cat. P_682
  • Acquired in 2002
By:
Beatriz Herráez

In The Construction of the Tower (1997), a work in oil and encaustic (hot wax) on wood, González depicts a building under construction, with its duplicated inverted twin below, in a mirror image. This contrast is further reinforced by presenting the same motif twice, first in black and white and then in colour.

In a text written at the time, art critic Daniel Giralt-Miracle suggested that the artist might have drawn on the Rorschach test or the labyrinthine world of Lewis Carroll for his inspiration — projected worlds and imaginary universes in which reality is twisted and improbable architectures are forged. In these possible sources, we can trace the unfolding repetitions and mirror images, the distortions of the everyday, to be found in much of González's work.

More recently, the artist himself has referred to his images as 'light-filled dreams'. Other possible references in his works include games of mirrors, allusions to a dreamlike world and the use of iconographies such as Bruegel the Elder's World Upside Down. His paintings have also been described as 'baroque dystopias', and certainly, these humorous and gently ironic approaches to and interpretations of the world of dreams might also be linked to figures such as Giordano Bruno, Ramón Gómez de la Serna, Henri Michaux and Salvador Dalí, to mention just a few. In a reinterpretation in which image and text converge, Curro González creates an imaginary that challenges the very history of representation.

Beatriz Herráez

 
By:
Beatriz Herráez
Curro González
Seville 1960

Curro González studied Fine Arts at the University of Seville. Early on in his career, he was linked to a group of artists who played an important role in the renewal of the Spanish visual arts scene in the 1980s. His work was included in exhibitions such as 'Cota Cero (+-0.00): sobre el nivel del mar' [0.00 m Above Sea Level] at the exhibition hall of the Cultural Centre of the Alicante and Murcia Savings Bank (1985), curated by Kevin Power in the wake of exhibitions such as 'Madrid D. F.', and 'Nuevas Figuraciones' [New Figurations]; he was interviewed by Guillermo Paneque for the magazine Figura; and his piece Canción [Song] (1998) featured on the cover of the magazine Arena, reflecting the central position his work had achieved since his inaugural exhibition in 1982 at the Galería Imagen Múltiple in Seville.

Curro González's work escapes any common definition. Both in his early paintings, which are linked to the abstract tradition, and his later works which are predominantly figurative, his work is built out of an elaborate iconographic catalogue, rich in references to art history and literature. Other aspects with which he has experimented throughout his career include composition, the traditional problems of perspective and the 'organisation of the work as something to be solved with surface values', as González's himself puts it.

He received a residency fellowship at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris (2013); the Endesa grant for the Visual Arts (2011); the New York State Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant (1988); and a grant from the Ministry of Culture (1983). He held solo exhibitions at the Andalusian Centre for Contemporary Art (Seville, 2000 and 2015); the Musée Paul Valery (Séte, France, 2014); and the Reina Sofía Museum (Madrid, 2015). He has also participated in group exhibitions in institutions and exhibition venues such as the Teruel Museum (2014); the Iberdrola Tower (Bilbao, 2013); and the Instituto Cervantes in Tokyo (2013).

He received a residency fellowship at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris (2013); the Endesa grant for the Visual Arts (2011); the New York State Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant (1988); and a grant from the Ministry of Culture (1983). He held solo exhibitions at the Andalusian Centre for Contemporary Art (Seville, 2000 and 2015); the Musée Paul Valery (Séte, France, 2014); and the Reina Sofía Museum (Madrid, 2015). He has also participated in group exhibitions in institutions and exhibition venues such as the Teruel Museum (2014); the Iberdrola Tower (Bilbao, 2013); and the Instituto Cervantes in Tokyo (2013).

Beatriz Herráez

 
«Dreaming Babel» (Barcelona, 1997).
Vv.Aa. Colección Banco de España. Catálogo razonado, Madrid, Banco de España, 2019, vol. 2.