José Manuel Broto

JOSÉ MANUEL BROTO (Zaragoza, 1949).
Untitled, 1989.
Acrylic and collage on canvas.
Signed and dated on the back.
Measures: 146 x 144 cm.
Aragonese painter who was part of the new abstraction of the 1970s, and one of the most significant figures in contemporary Spanish painting, José Manuel Broto studied at the School of Arts and Crafts in Zaragoza, and exhibited his work for the first time in 1968 (Galdeano Gallery), showing a style in line with constructivism. In 1972 he moved to Barcelona, where he founded the group Trama together with Javier Rubio, Xavier Grau and Gonzalo Tena. With this group he presented his work in 1976 at the Maeght gallery in Barcelona, with the support of Antonio Tàpies. Trama also published an art magazine of the same name, of which, however, only two issues appeared (1976-1977). However, after the dissolution of the group, Broto moved towards a language close to abstract expressionism, which incorporated a primitive natural landscape into his work. He showed these new works in his first solo exhibition in Paris, held in 1984 at the Adrien Maeght gallery. The following year he left Barcelona and settled in the French capital, where he spent ten years and coincided with other Spanish artists such as Barceló, Campano and Sicilia. During his Parisian period Broto replaced the romantic themes with more austere and abstract forms, and his work became filled with organic forms related to the ascetic and mystical tradition. In the mid-1980s he returned to Spain, this time settling in Mallorca. Already a mature artist, he practises a neo-abstraction directly linked to the Catalan school of the seventies, influenced in its origins by the aesthetic and plastic principles of the French group Soporte/Superficie, which in 1966 called for a return to painting after the disorder produced by the conceptual movements. From 1998 onwards, his range of themes expanded to include spatial figures, transparencies, atmospheric forms, etc., combined with a colourful treatment and a rigorous structure. Throughout his career, Broto has held numerous exhibitions, and has been awarded the National Prize for Plastic Arts (1995), the ARCO Prize of the Critics' Association (1997) and the Aragón Goya Prize for Engraving (2003). In 1995 the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid dedicated a retrospective exhibition to him. He is currently represented in the Museo de Arte Abstracto Español in Cuenca, the FRAC (Midi-Pyrénées, France), the Chase Manhattan Bank Collection in New York, the Juan March Foundation, the Reina Sofía, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Fond National d'Art Contemporain in Paris, the Kampo Collection in Tokyo, the Tàpies Foundation in Barcelona, the DOVE Collection in Zurich, the Ateneum in Helsinki, the Peter Stuyvesant Foundation in Amsterdam, the Maeght in France, La Caixa in Barcelona, the Preussag in Hanover and the IVAM in Valencia.