Joan Hernández Pijuan

JOAN HERNÁNDEZ PIJUAN (Barcelona, 1931 - 2005).
Untitled, 1987.
Mixed media on handmade paper.
Signed in the lower margin.
Measurements: 93 x 184 cm; 117 x 210 cm (frame).

This work by Hernández Pijuan, made in 1987, perfectly represents his exploration of pictorial language as a way of essential reduction and poetic contemplation. Two plant stems with a subtle outline float on a luminous ochre background, an apparently minimal composition that contains a profound reflection on space, memory and time.
In the eighties, Pijuan dedicated a significant part of his production to the theme of the garden and nature, a recurring motif in his work that he used as an exercise in formal and conceptual purification. The image is resolved with an almost calligraphic language, of great oriental influence, in which gesture and emptiness acquire a crucial weight. The texture of the handmade paper, with its organic roughness, reinforces the sensation of immediacy and fragility, generating an atmosphere of balance between the material and the immaterial.
This work is an example of the constant dialogue between abstraction and figurative reference in Pijuan's work. Here, the plant forms appear stripped of all superfluous detail, reduced to their purest essence. The absence of artifice and chromatic sobriety turn the image into a space of silence and meditation, a characteristic feature of his production at this stage. The use of monochrome backgrounds and extreme synthesis refer to his particular way of understanding painting, where the visual experience becomes an act of introspection.

Joan Hernández Pijuan is one of the key figures of contemporary Spanish painting. His work moves from an initial expressionism to an increasingly refined language, in which formal reduction and the exploration of space acquire an absolute protagonism. His training at La Lonja, the Sant Jordi School of Fine Arts in Barcelona and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris marked his beginnings, but his true recognition would come in the seventies, when his work acquired a more conceptual and spiritual dimension.
Throughout his career, Pijuan was a professor and dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Barcelona, as well as a member of the Royal Academy of San Fernando in Madrid. His importance in Spanish art was consolidated with awards such as the National Prize for Plastic Arts (1981), the Sant Jordi Cross (1985) and the City of Barcelona Prize (2004).
His work has been the subject of major national and international exhibitions, most notably the retrospective at the MACBA in Barcelona in 2003, which subsequently traveled to France, Sweden and Italy. He has also participated in biennials and exhibitions in Zurich, Milan, New York, Paris, Amsterdam, Osaka, Buenos Aires and Johannesburg, establishing himself as a reference in European abstract and conceptual art.
Currently, his work is represented in major international collections and museums, including the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, the MACBA, the Museo de Arte Abstracto Español de Cuenca and the Museo Patio Herreriano de Valladolid. Internationally, his work is part of institutions such as the Guggenheim in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki, the National Gallery in Montreal, the Museum of Modern Art in Buenos Aires and the Kulturstiftung in Austria, among many others.
The current boom in Hernández Pijuan's market is due to his ability to create works of great emotional depth through an economy of means, making him an essential artist in the contemporary art scene.