Rafael Canogar

RAFAEL CANOGAR GÓMEZ (Toledo, 1935).
"Imposta", 2007.
Construction on handmade paper and painted in oil glued to board.
Signed and dated lower right zone: "Canogar 07"; inscribed lower left zone: 'IMPOSTA'; date, signature and inscription on the back: "07 / Canogar / 'IMPOSTA'".
Work cataloged on the artist's website.
Exhibitions:
- 2007. Rafael Canogar. Fragmentations. Oporto (Portugal), Galeria Sala Maior, 21 April-30 May.
- 2009. Rafael Canogar Academy of Spain. Florence (Italy), Archivio di Stato di Firenze, 13 May-24 June.
- 2010. Rafael Canogar. 75 Years/75 Works. Oporto (Portugal) Centro de Congresos da Alfândega, 13-28 November.
Bibliography:
- BARBERO, Giovanna and DORFLES, Gillo: Rafael Canogar Accademico di Spagna. Roma, Verso l'Arte Edizioni, 2009 (Repr. color p. 52, with mixed technique).
- PAREDES, Tómas, BARBERO, Giovanna and GARCIA BERRIO, Antonio: Rafael Canogar. 75 years/works. Museum of the Alfándega, Oporto (Portugal), 2010 (Repr. color pages 163 and 258 with mixed technique).
- VIVAS, Lola: Rafael Canogar. Fragmentations. Oporto, Galeria Sala Maior, 2007 (Repr. color s/p., with mixed technique).
Presents Cordeiros Gallery label.
Measurements: 151 x 113 cm; 172 x 120 cm (frame).
Based on an image where abstraction becomes aware of the compositional space, Canogar confronts gray, red and black, three recurring shades in his production, which reveal an open debate towards socio-cultural concepts. This use of flat colors, aesthetically opposed, drinking from different primary colors, responds to the desire for opposition and contradiction that prevails in many of the artist's works. In fact, Canogar states: "My work wishes to reflect, in its form of birth, in its genesis, those two elemental and primary forces that have always accompanied man: constructive and destructive forces, or construction-deconstruction. Opposing forces and the struggle of opposites, as a structural part of my work; as the reality of man who lives immersed in his own contradictions."
Co-founder of the group "El Paso" in 1957, during the fifties he developed a fully informalist work, which drifts during the sixties in an increasingly narrative complex figuration. In the sixties he achieved international recognition as a guest professor at Milles College in California to teach the art course 1965-66, and as a guest artist at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles in 1969. Also, between 1972 and 1974 he was invited by the D.A.A.D. in Berlin as an artist in residence. During his mature stage, from 1975 onwards, Canogar invents a new iconography, his own and personal, which he expresses through the mask, the head, the face, as a representation of the man who loses his individuality and becomes a plastic sign. His work will also be recognized in Spain, and during the eighties he will be a member of the Advisory Council of the General Directorate of Fine Arts of the Ministry of Culture, of the Board of Trustees of the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Madrid, and a member of the Board of Directors of the National Heritage. Throughout his career, Canogar has held countless solo and group exhibitions. Among the personal exhibitions, several have been retrospectives, among others: Museo Nacional de Arte Contemporáneo and Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid, Museo de Arte Moderno de la Villa de Paris, Sonia Heine Foundation in Oslo, Konsthalle de Lund in Sweden, Paris Art Center, Bochum Art Museum in Germany, Istituto di Storia dell'Arte de Parma, Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, Fundación Casa del Cordón de Burgos, Museo de Santa Cruz de Toledo, Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid, etc.