Juan Genovés "Recent Paintings"

Marlborough Chelsea

poster for Juan Genovés "Recent Paintings"

This event has ended.

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 create a dynamic of intensity and dislocation. The motivation for the groups’ activities are never clear, as Genovés’ allows the viewer to draw his own conclusions. The artist’s forceful use of line and perspective, aligned with an exacting eye for the modulation and use of color, are as physically engaging as they are aesthetically compelling. Born in Valencia in 1930, Genovés has been exhibiting with Marlborough since 1964. This will be his first exhibition at Marlborough Chelsea.

Genovés’ body of work is devoted to the subject of political engagement. His artistic development occurred in the isolated world of Franco’s Spain, where he was influenced by modern photography and cinema, especially the work of Sergei Eisenstein, and where he developed an extraordinary vocabulary of expression despite the odds. 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.

Media

Schedule

from February 19, 2009 to March 21, 2009

Artist(s)

Juan Genovés

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