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

Collection

Lago Tiberíades [Sea of Galilee]

Image caption
JUAN ANTONIO AGUIRRE

Lago Tiberíades [Sea of Galilee]

  • 2005
  • Oil on canvas
  • 60 x 73 cm
  • Cat. P_735
  • Acquired in 2003
By:
Frederic Montornés

Juan Antonio Aguirre was a painter, critic, academic and museum curator. He was the force behind the emergence of a group of artists in 1967 who sought to break away from the Informalist language and figurative trends that had gone before them. They championed an experimental, geometric art and a figurative technique close to the approach endorsed by the cutting-edge of pop art and therefore close to the tenets found in English-speaking countries. As a leading member of the New Generation group, Aguirre was committed to a style of painting that would soon evolve towards Neo-Constructivist compositions, even though he initially flirted with a language close to the Naïve and the abstract. Over time, these traits would shape the personality of a style noted both for its use of colour and for blurred forms. Drawing on Pierre Bonnard, Henri Matisse and Edvard Munch, this form of expression allowed Juan Antonio Aguirre to address the recurrent themes in his work from more eclectic figures. This meant friendly landscapes – particularly gardens and ponds -, still-lifes with flowers and the odd human figure produced with a nervous gesture, a very specific palette and a constant search for beauty, harmony and concordance among the elements that made up each of his canvases.

The works by Aguirre in the Banco de España collection come from three different decades. They are good examples of his evolution as an artist, and of the way in which he strove to find the best way to capture emotion – his emotion – rather than the storm generated by what he saw and felt.

Frederic Montornés

 
By:
Roberto Díaz
Juan Antonio Aguirre
Madrid 1945 - Madrid 2016

As a painter, academic and art essayist, Juan Antonio Aguirre was one of the leading figures of Spanish art in the 1970s and 1980s. He was the driving force behind the reviving of the pictorial genre in Spain and the break from the principles of Informalism. He studied Philosophy and Psychology at the Complutense University of Madrid and attended the Madrid Central School of Arts and Crafts. In the mid-1960s he started to show his paintings and embarked on a career as a curator and director at the Amadis Gallery (Madrid), where he exhibited the work of peers who included Carlos Alcolea, Carlos Franco and Luis Gordillo. His pictorial work began with a figurative style bordering on the Naïve, which he turned his back on at the end of the 1960s when he moved to geometric abstraction. Yet it would be after re-examining the paintings of Henri Matisse, Pierre Bonnard and Edvard Munch that he shaped what was to be his characteristic style, constructing colour to show an Expressionist influence. He applied paint using flowing, wavy strokes, depicting everyday scenes, landscapes and portraits with references to personal experiences. He developed this style over the following decades.

He is also noted for his work as an academic and essayist with the publication of Arte último in 1969 and in cultural management as the deputy director of the Madrid Museum of Modern Art from 1982 to 1986. His work has been shown in leading group exhibitions such as ‘New Generation.1967-1977’ at the Velázquez Palace exhibition hall of the Reina Sofía Museum (Madrid, 1977) and ‘Madrid D. F.’, at Madrid Municipal Museum (1980). A highlight of his solo shows is the retrospective of his work at the Valencia Institute of Modern Art (IVAM) (Valencia, 1999).

Roberto Díaz

 
 
Vv.Aa. Colección Banco de España. Catálogo razonado, Madrid, Banco de España, 2019, vol. 2.