Joan Miquel Roca Fuster

JOAN MIQUEL ROCA FUSTER (Palma de Mallorca, 1942 - 2006).
"Nostalgia". 1975.
Oil on canvas.
Signed in the lower margin. Signed, titled and dated on the back.
Measurements: 92 x 73 cm; 118 x 100 cm (frame).
Roca Fuster began his artistic training in Palma de Mallorca but soon, in 1958, he moved to Barcelona and enrolled in the School of Fine Arts of Sant Jordi. On his first trip to Madrid, in 1960, he was fascinated by the paintings of Velázquez, Zurbarán, Goya and El Greco at the Prado. During this decade of the sixties he became interested in abstraction and informalism, painting pictures where the figurative is relegated to a secondary role. A key element in his work was always music, as well as the myths of cinema and theater. During the seventies and eighties he approached Rembrandt and Caravaggio, as well as the Pre-Raphaelite school. His first exhibitions, held in 1965 in the Grifé Escoda galleries in Madrid and Palma, were a great success with the public and critics. In fact, the following year he made the leap abroad, with his solo exhibition at the Don Quixote Gallery in London; almost all his work from this period was sold in England, to important private collections. From then on he exhibited his work throughout Europe and the United States, with group and solo shows in New York, Stockholm, Oklahoma, Chicago, Antibes (France), Lyon and Los Angeles, in addition to his repeated participation in the International Fairs of Basel, Frankfurt, Los Angeles and New York. Throughout his career he won numerous awards, such as the first prizes for Young Painting from the Sala Parés (1961) and the Dirección General de Bellas Artes (1962), the first medal at the Salón de Otoño de Palma de Mallorca (1966), the extraordinary prize at the I Bienal Internacional de Barcelona (1967), or the first medal at the Salón de Otoño de Madrid (1968), among many other mentions. Although most of his work is in private collections, we can see an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Madrid.