RAFAEL CANOGAR (Toledo, 1935).
Urban Scenes" series, 1988-
Oil on canvas.
Work registered in the artist's archive, Nº 1988-052.
Provenance: Private collection, France
Size: 73 x 60 cm; 76 x 63 cm (frame).
Bibliography:
- CANOGAR, Rafael: In CANOGAR, Rafael: Rafael Canogar. Alicante, Galería Italia, 1993.
- CANOGAR, Rafael: In CANOGAR, Rafael: Rafael Canogar. Zaragoza, Banco Zaragozano, 1994 .
- CANOGAR, Rafael: In CANOGAR, Rafael and CANOGAR, Rafael / LEÓN, Carlos: O novo Canogar. Santiago de Compostela, Auditorio de Galicia, 1994 (Cit. p. 15).
- CANOGAR, Rafael: In ÃLVAREZ DE ARANA, Antoni and CANOGAR, Rafael: Canogar. Barcelona, Barcelona Gallery, 1995 (Cit. p. 5).
- CANOGAR, Rafael: In CANOGAR, Rafael: Rafael Canogar. Miengo (Cantabria), Sala Robayera, Miengo Town Hall, 1995.
- CARAMEL, Luciano: "Rafael Canogar. Obiettivo: la pittura" = "Rafael Canogar. Objective: painting". In CARAMEL, Luciano: Rafael Canogar. Objective: painting. Roma, Verso l'Arte Edizioni, 2008.
- CATALÃN, Carlos: "Canogar: the permanence of the essential". In CATALÃN, Carlos: Canogar. "Recent work". Estella (Navarre), Estella-Lizarra Town Council / Gustavo de Maeztu Museum, 2002.
- GARCÃA-TIZÓN, Antonio: "A permanent compulsive balance". In GARCÃA-TIZÓN, Antonio: Canogar. Córdoba, Caja Provincial de Ahorros de Córdoba, 1992, Colección Exposiciones de La Caja.
- MOURE, Gloria: "Rafael Canogar". In MOURE, Gloria: Canogar. Paintings. Barcelona, Barcelona Gallery, 1991
- MUÑOZ, Miguel Ãngel: Espejismo y realidad: Aproximaciones a la obra de Rafael Canogar. Mexico City, Editorial Praxis, 2003.
- NIETO ALCAIDE, Víctor: Untitled. In NIETO ALCAIDE, Víctor: Canogar 1957-1997. Toledo, Servicio de Publicaciones de la Junta de Comunidades de Castilla-La Mancha 1997, Colección Arte e Imagen, nº 2 (Cit. p. 35).
From 1983 onwards Canogar began a period of greater essentialism, resorting to less obvious aesthetic concepts such as heads, in fact, in his own words, "I soon needed the image again and as a strategy I used the readings that artists make of other artists: in my case a representation based on the sculptures of Julio González. It was the recovery of memory, of the historical avant-garde. The head, the face, the mask: a reading of a vision of primitivism, of the representation of the figure as an archetype, as a totem. In the "urban series" man loses his individuality and becomes a plastic sign, an anonymous collective component, a structure that allows me to compose freely, a hanger on which to hang the painting".
Rafael Canogar trained with the painter Daniel Vázquez Díaz between 1949 and 1954. During these years he worked along the lines of the avant-garde, soon moving into the path of abstraction. Co-founder of the group "El Paso" in 1957, during the fifties he developed a fully informalist work, which in the sixties became an increasingly complex narrative figuration. From the 1960s onwards he achieved international recognition as a visiting professor at Milles College in California to teach the art course 1965-66, and as a guest artist at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles in 1969. Between 1972 and 1974 he was also invited by the D.A.A.D. in Berlin as an artist in residence. During his mature period, from 1975 onwards, Canogar invented a new iconography, his own and personal, which he expressed through the mask, the head, the face, as a representation of man who loses his individuality and becomes a plastic sign. His work was also recognised in Spain, and during the 1980s he was a member of the Advisory Council of the General Directorate of Fine Arts of the Ministry of Culture, of the Board of Trustees of the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Madrid, and a member of the Board of Directors of the National Heritage.