RAFAEL CANOGAR

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  • RAFAEL CANOGAR

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Date: 30 January - 18 May 2025

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RAFAEL CANOGAR
[I]Realities [Works 1949-2024]

This exhibition provides another opportunity to take a fresh look at the extensive and fruitful career of Rafael Canogar (Toledo, 1935). It highlights the presence in his work of a series of constants that show us an artist at a moment of extraordinary creation in 2024. One of his secular characteristics has been the intense way in which he has dedicated himself to painting, as if consumed by an unquenchable fire in the face of the abyss that is the craft of creation. This is in addition to how he has frequently distinguished himself by his admiration of expressive delicacy, elegance in action and his appreciation of tranquillity, a reflection that is also capable of praising, without complexes, the courageous and daily confrontation with the act of painting.

The exhibition consists of around sixty works: paintings, collages and sculptural reliefs, dating from 1949 to 2024, most of which come from his personal collection, which has been exceptionally loaned for the occasion, as well as some from other private or public collections such as the MNCARS. The works are divided into five chapters that reflect a pictorial journey between the representative and the abstract (if indeed such a distinction is of any relevance in the case of a work of art), hence the title [I]Realities. The titles of the chapters are as follows: “Nature, You Have Moved Me” (Naturaleza, que me has conmovido), which opens the exhibition by presenting this 1949 painting together with other more recent abstract views, large-format works evoking nature, painted over the course of the last five years. The exhibition continues in chronological order with the titles: “Circa 1957. Matter and Sign: the Other Art” (La materia y el signo: el arte otro); “Circa 1968. The Secret Royalty of Pain” (Realeza secreta del dolor) and “Abstractions and Constructions: Circa the Eighties” (Abstracciones y construcciones: circa los ochenta). The exhibition closes with a triad of paintings that evoke the 1950s and the world of Klee and Miró: “1954-1955. Klee and Miró, Magical (Klee and Miró, mágicos).

A resident of Madrid since his childhood, he lived not far from the studio of an old master painter, Daniel Vázquez Díaz, who began to give him lessons and who also instilled in him the fire of modernism. When he discovered the work of Miró and Klee, his painting veered towards abstraction, a process that was completed with his life-changing trip to the turbulent Paris of the fifties. Between 1957 and 1960, he was a member of the informalist group “El Paso”, which played such a fundamental role in our history and introduced our art to the international market.

That period gave way to another, which the artist called Realist, and which transcended the contextual social epic to become a somewhat sorrowful reflection on the human condition. Canogar then transformed his images into spaces of pictorial investigation in which he would often explore the geometric, the monochrome and the textural, until they became a magnificent painterly manifestation. In the words of the curator, Alfonso de la Torre: “we are overwhelmed by the presence of such a truly new iconographic realm, which reveals the fortune of someone who has come to possess the bliss of true knowledge”.

Rafael Canogar (Toledo, 1935)
He studied under the painter Daniel Vázquez Díaz (1949-54). Founder member of the El Paso group (1957-1960). Visiting Professor at the Mills College in Oakland, California, to teach the 1965-66 art course. Guest artist at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles in 1969. Invited by the DAAD in Berlin as resident artist (1972 and 1974). Member of the Board of the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid (1983-86). Member of the Advisory Council of the Directorate-General of Fine Arts (1981-84). Member of the Board of Trustees of the National Museum of Contemporary Art (1983). Member of the Board of Directors of National Heritage (1984-90). Member of the Board of Trustees of the AENA Foundation. Academic numerary member of the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts since 1996. Doctor honoris causa of the UNED in 2001.

He has participated in countless collective and solo exhibitions in prestigious museums all over the world, including, most notably, the National Museum of Contemporary Art (1971), the National Library (1982), the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (1975), the Sonia Heine Foundation in Oslo (1975), the Lund Konsthalle (1975), the Paris Art Centre (1987), the Bochum Art Museum (1988), the Istituto di Storia dell’Arte, Parma (1971), the Bilbao Museum of Fine Arts (1990) and the MNCARS. His works have been admired in cities such as Warsaw, Buenos Aires, Monterrey, Mexico City and Montevideo.

He has received all manner of awards and honours such as the Golden Palette at the Cagnes-Sur-Mer International Painting Festival, (1969); the Grand Prize of the Sao Paulo Biennale (1971); the Golden Sun Award of the Iberian Daily Sun (1972); the Grand Prize of the Sofia International Painting Triennale (1982); The National Plastic Arts Award(1982); Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres (1985) ; Commander of the Order of Isabella the Catholic (1991); Tomislav Krizman Award of Honour, Croatia; Gold Medal of Castile-La Mancha; Favourite Son of the City of Toledo (2002); Gold Medal of Merit in the Fine Arts (2003); Plastic Arts and Culture Award of the Community of Madrid (2005); Arts and Science Award of Castile-La Mancha; Ignazio Silone Award, Rome (2009); Royal Foundation of Toledo Award (2011); National Prize for Engraving of the RABASF (2012); Phoenix Award, Fenghuang, China; Extraordinary Culture Medal of Castile-La Mancha (2018) and the Baron of Forna Medal of the RABASF (2021).

His works are on display in numerous museums and collections worldwide, including the Reina Sofía Museum (MNCARS), the MoMA in New York, the Pasadena Art Museum, California, the Hamburg Kunsthalle, the Rufino Tamayo Museum in Mexico City, the Museum of Art and History in Geneva and the Ateneum Art Museum in Helsinki. The Rafael Canogar Space was inaugurated in Toledo in 2024.

Alfonso de la Torre
An art theoretician and critic, he specialises in the emergence of the abstract world in Europe during the post-war period. He has curated more than a hundred exhibitions, published essays and poetry and given courses in several universities, museums and institutions: The Pompidou Centre (Malaga), the Reina Sofía Museum (MNCARS), the Museum of Teruel, the University of the Andes, the University of Cordoba, the University of Granada, the University of Castile-La Mancha, the Menéndez Pelayo International University (UIMP), the UNED and the Université de La Sorbonne.

He is a member of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA). In 2022, he curated "With Hands Signs Grow" for the 59th Venice Biennale. Located in Roca Tarpeya, and recently inaugurated in association with the Royal Toledo Foundation, the Rafael Canogar Space was commissioned under his curatorship.

He is the author of the catalogues raisonnés of the artists Manolo Millares (the Reina Sofía Museum (MNCARS) and the Azcona Foundation, 2004); Manuel Rivera (the Provincial Council of Granada and the Azcona Foundation, 2009); Pablo Palazuelo (the Reina Sofía Museum (MNCARS), the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona (MACBA), the Palazuelo Foundation and the Azcona Foundation, 2015) and Fernando Zóbel (the Ayala Foundation, the Azcona Foundation and the Juan March Foundation, 2023). Also of the graphic work of Manolo Millares and Salvador Victoria, who received the AACA Prize for the best book published in 2023.

One of his specialities is the analysis of contemporary sculpture. For example, he has recently published essays on Eduardo Chillida, Martín Chirino, Julio López, Remigio Mendiburu, Jorge Oteiza, Pablo Palazuelo and Francisco Sobrino, among others.

He was invited by the Université de la Sorbonne to the international colloquium "Le travail du visible", which was later published by the same university under the title "The Inheritance of Signs" (La heredad de los signos) (Hermann Éditeurs, Paris, 2014).

Between 2005 and 2019, he curated an annual programme of artistic interventions in public spaces during the ARCO Art Fair, in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture, the Community of Madrid and the Madrid City Council. He has acted as a consultant for numerous recently established contemporary art collections, both in Spain and abroad.

His texts have achieved international recognition, as is evidenced by recent publications such as his text for the catalogue of the exhibition "Fernando Zóbel. The Future of the Past" (El futuro del pasado) at the Prado Museum; Francisco Sobrino (Éditions Dilecta, Paris); Jesús Rafael Soto (Odalys Foundation) or Javier Pérez (Ludion Publishers). And thanks to a commission from the Juan March Foundation, "Paul Klee and Spain. The Irredeemable Admirers of Klee" (Los irredentos kleeianos) - (Genueve Ediciones, 2021).

He has curated several exhibitions on Rafael Canogar:
"I Am Among the People"(Entre el pueblo estoy), as part of the project "The Fifties", with ARCO, the Madrid City Council, the Community of Madrid and the Ministry of Culture, in 2013.
"Rafael Canogar. Yesterday Today" (Ayer Hoy), his last major retrospective, at the CEART museum in Fuenlabrada, in 2017.
"Rafael Canogar. Reborn" (Renacido). Infanta Elena Museum, Tomelloso, 2021.
The Rafael Canogar Space - Project 1- "The Construction of a Language" (La construcción de un lenguaje). Royal Toledo Foundation - Roca Tarpeya, Toledo, 2024.

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