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

Collection

Sin título [Untitled]

Image caption
LUIS CLARAMUNT

Sin título [Untitled]

  • 1988
  • Oil on canvas
  • 204,5 x 162,3 cm
  • Cat. P_772
  • Acquired in 2012
By:
Beatriz Herráez

Untitled (1988) is predominantly painted in dark tones — ochres, yellows and earths — reflecting Luis Claramunt's characteristic tendency to work in monochrome. However, the abstract motif of this painting differs from some of his previous works, which contain figurative references to the landscape and the human figure. Here, Claramunt offers a schematized abstract work, with the emphasis more on the more script-based and calligraphic elements of his compositions and less on paint spots and material aspects. The importance of the brushstroke and the line, and the controlled gestures used in applying the paint, were also important features of his work throughout his career.

Claramunt's form of painting in Untitled comes very close to drawing — a contour drawing in which the immediacy of the gesture, involuntary aspects and automatisms determine the appearance of the large image. In the retrospective exhibition 'El viaje vertical' [Vertical Journey], curated by Nuria Enguita at MACBA in 2012, the historian referred to the importance of this technique in Claramunt's work: 'A constant in the way he tackles the real [...] always working from direct observation, but never painting from life'. In this way, drawing played a major role throughout all of his oeuvre, and also in the texts, notebooks and artist's books he published. Photography was also important to his work, and he took numerous shots during his travels to cities such as Barcelona and Bilbao.

Beatriz Herráez

 
By:
Roberto Díaz
Luis Claramunt
Barcelona 1951 - Zarauz (Gipuzkoa) 2000

A self-taught artist, Luis Claramunt began painting at the age of fifteen, when he started to escape the cultured, petty-bourgeois atmosphere of his family home to explore the slums of Barcelona. He mainly painted urban scenes and the interiors of tablaos (flamenco bars), using expressionist brushstrokes, with a variegated graphic composition jumbling architectural features, bodies and objects. In 1986 he moved to Seville, from where he made frequent visits to Marrakesh. This was to be the beginning of a new stage in which he gradually dematerialised the image, from the stain as a forming element of the composition to the line, graphic work and calligraphy to which he reduces the figure in a process that entailed emptying the space. In his series dedicated to Bilbao and Madrid, to which he moved in 1989, there is tendency to work with black on white. His series Shadow Line, inspired by Joseph Conrad's novel of the same name, marked the beginning of his interest in the theme of the sea, which continued until his final series, completed in 1999, Shipwrecks and Storms. His art work also includes drawings, photographs and self-published books, produced mainly between 1994 and 1999, in which he developed and expanded his pictorial language.

Claramunt first achieved fame when his work was included in the exhibition 'Cota cero (+/- 0.00)' ['Sea Level (+/- 0.00)' at the Sala Parpalló in Valencia (1985) and with the monographic exhibition of his work staged by the Seville Museum of Contemporary Art (1986). In 2012 the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art held a retrospective of his work.

Roberto Díaz

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