Rafael Canogar

RAFAEL CANOGAR GÓMEZ (Toledo, 1935).
Untitled, 1991, from the Suite Olympic Centennial.
Silkscreen on 270 grams Vélin d'Arches paper, copy 110/250.
Signed, dated and justified by hand.
This work is part of the "Suite Olympic Centennial", complete edition 110/250, which will be auctioned on 27 September 2022, in 50 consecutive lots numbered 35245230 to 35245280.
Measurements: 90 x 63 cm.
A disciple of Daniel Vázquez Díaz, Canogar was a co-founder of the group "El Paso", and during the fifties he developed a fully informalist work, which drifted during the sixties into an increasingly narrative complex figuration. 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, as can be seen in the work we are now presenting. His awards include the National Prize for Plastic Arts (1982), he is a member of the San Fernando Academy, and is represented in the most important modern art collections around the world, such as the Reina Sofía Museum, the MOMA in New York, the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburg, the Rufino Tamayo Museum in Mexico and the Chicago Art Institute, among many others.
The Olympic Suite is composed of 50 lithographs and serigraphs chosen to represent various contemporary artistic trends. It was published to commemorate the first centenary of modern Olympism. The artists chosen are defined by diverse movements and pictorial trends, from the conceptualism and minimalism of "Ben" Vautier, the lyrical abstraction of Yasse Tabuchi, the painting of Oleg Tselkov which concentrates on the human figure, intensely expressive and treated with forceful forms and intense colours that seek to reflect the conflicts and violence of his time, and finally the work of André Arabis, clearly abstract and geometric.