Miguel Angel Campano

MIGUEL ÁNGEL CAMPANO (Madrid, 1948 - 2018).
Untitled (Ruth and Boaz), 1992.
Oil on canvas.
Presents informative label of the Juana de Aizpuru gallery.
Signed and dated on the back.
Measurements: 40 x 30 cm; 43 x 32 cm (frame).
Ruth and Booz was a recurring theme in the work of Campano, in fact a work of 1991, was exhibited at the Palacio de Velazquez Madrid, the same year of its realization. As the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía points out, these are "works inspired by Poussin's L'Été, which formally open the way to a new way of assuming the painting and the pictorial space. The artist generates structures of black paint fields on a neutral background, which dominate his production in the mid-nineties. These pieces are very abstract, apparently detached from narrative content, the story disappears and only the painting remains. The works of this period are identified by the extension of the material and the desire for compositional and poetic balance".
According to the Bible, Boaz notices Ruth, a young Moabite widow and his relative, gathering grain in her fields. He soon learns of her difficult circumstances, as well as her kindness and loyalty to her mother-in-law, Naomi. At night, following Naomi's instructions to seduce Boaz, Ruth visits him while he sleeps and comes under his power. He later agrees to marry her, and their great-grandson is David.
Miguel Ángel Campano is one of the referents of the so-called renovation of Spanish painting, which took place in the eighties and in which Ferrán García Sevilla, José Manuel Broto, José María Sicilia and Miquel Barceló also participated. In the 70's he moved to Paris thanks to a scholarship; the planned year became a stay of more than ten, there he lived and developed his brilliant pictorial career. Then he went to live in Mallorca. In 1980 he was part of the exhibition Madrid DF, in the Municipal Museum of Madrid, along with several artists among whom were the same ones that today -except García Sevilla- accompany him in the Palacio de Velázquez. Five years later he was selected, together with other fellow artists of his generation, then all young painters, such as Miquel Barceló, who was already an outstanding figure, and José María Sicilia, for a group exhibition in New York. In 1996 he was awarded the National Prize for Plastic Arts. He had just suffered a serious stroke and underwent surgery in Madrid. This forced him to spend several months without painting. Then he painted "only in black", a very symbolic color according to his own words. Three years later, the Reina Sofia Museum organized in this same Palacio de Velazquez an exhibition dedicated to his recent work then, that of the 90s. His works are exhibited in the most important museums, such as the British Museum in London, the Pompidou Center in Paris and the Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Reina Sofía in Madrid.