The Directors of Marlborough Fine Art announced the first London exhibition in over 40 years by the Spanish artist Juan Genovés of 15 new paintings that will open at Marlborough Fine Art, London on October 29th. Born in Valencia in 1930, Genovés has been exhibiting with Marlborough worldwide since 1964.
Juan Genovés -Palenque, 2009, acrylic on canvas on board, 150 x 120 cm
This exhibition continues Genovés’ exploration of people in groups, depicted through bird’s-eye views of crowds where the absence of buildings, roads, trees or clues to a common landscape creates a dynamic of intensity and dislocation. The motivations for the groups’ activities are never clear, as Genovés allows the viewer to draw his own conclusions.
Historians generally characterize Spanish artist Juan Genovés as a social realist, known for expressing his social and political views. He grew up during the devastation of the 1930s Spanish Civil War, which, along with the repressive post World War II Franco regime in Spain, became the foundation for his depiction of war and injustice in his work. During the 1960s, tensions increased between Spanish citizens and the oppressive regime. The industrial labor force became militant and organized recurrent strikes, to which the Franco regime reacted forcefully. In 1969, growing violence among protestors in the Basque region in Catalonia led the regime to suspend freedom of expression and assembly. The series of prints, El Lugar y el Tiempo (1971), recalls these darker moments of Spanish history
Genovés’ body of work is devoted to the subject of political engagement, developing his genre amidst the isolated world of Franco’s Spain. He was influenced by modern photography and cinema, especially the work of Sergei Eisenstein. Genovés’ highly painterly style, though seemingly contradictory, worked well to depict the anxiety, fear and desperation that people in society experienced during the Fascist regime. His painting El Abrazo, created near the end of Franco’s regime, just before his death, came to symbolize the desire of most Spaniards for a reconciliation of people in society and the end of the fight between democracy and totalitarianism. When images of this work circulated as a protest poster, Genovés was detained and held in solitary confinement for seven days. Since Franco’s death, Genovés’ work is still engaged with the movement and action of crowds, though while one has the feeling that the subjects in his paintings experience great anxiety, the threat of imminent violence has been removed.
Genovés is the recipient of a number of important prizes including the Mention of Honor at the XXXIII Venice Biennale, 1966; the Gold Medal at the VI Biennale Internazionale de San Marino, 1967; the Premio Nacional de Artes Plasticas, Spain, 1984 and the Premio de las Artes Plásticas de Generalitat Valenciana, Spain, 2002. A retrospective of Genovés’ work will be held at Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, in 2010.
Genovés’ work is found in many of the most important public collections in the United States and Europe, including The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago; Centre National d’Art Contemporain, Paris; The Museum of Modern Art and The Guggenheim Museum, both in New York; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Israel Museum, Jerusalem and IVAM, Valencia, among others.
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