SOLEDAD SEVILLA PORTILLO (Valencia, 1944).
"Insomnio", Granada, 2001.
Oil on canvas.
Signed, dated, titled and located on the back.
Measurements: 65 x 100 cm; 74,5 x 109 cm (frame).
A Valencian artist based in Barcelona, Soledad Sevilla trained at the Sant Jordi Academy of Fine Arts, and later extended her studies in Madrid and at Harvard University. She began her exhibition career at the end of the sixties, within a minimalist language which she abandoned in the following decade after participating in the Seminar on Automatic Generation of Plastic Forms held at the Calculus Centre of the Complutense University of Madrid. From then on he developed a geometrically based painting, using the module and its infinite variations. The evolution of Sevilla's language began at the end of the sixties in the search for an alternative style to the informalism and expressionism prevailing in Spain at the time, approaching Normative Art, its serial forms, its chromatic purity and its atonalism, rejecting subjectivity. From this first stage, influenced by Malevich and marked by the search for a purely abstract spatial conception, the artist moved on to optical, perceptive and structural proposals following her time at the Centro de Cálculo and her contact with José María Yturralde and Jordi Teixidor in the seventies. He continued, therefore, within a modular language, although now with a purely rhythmic conception, thus approaching a lyrical, non-objective painting, combining the emotional and the rational. Following this path, in the mid-eighties Sevilla focused on the investigation of landscape, with cultural and experiential connotations, delving into the perception of reality through subtle wefts and grids. Around this time, he also began to create his first installations. By then, Sevilla already had an important exhibition career not only in Spain, but also in the United States, Europe and Latin America. However, from the eighties onwards, his presence will be constant in the most important galleries in Madrid and other Spanish cities, and he will also reach Africa, Japan... His most recent exhibitions include the solo show held in 2012 at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. Winner of the National Prize for Plastic Arts in 1993 and Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts in 2007, Seville is currently represented in the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, the Museo de Bellas Artes in Bilbao, the Museo de Arte Abstracto in Cuenca, the IVAM in Valencia, the ARTIUM in Vitoria, the Künstmuseum in Malmö, the Marugame Hirai in Tokyo, the European Parliament and the Patrimonio Nacional, among other outstanding collections.