Rafael Canogar - Imprints (Paintings 1958 - 1962)
Cervantes Institute of London collaborates with the galleries Mayor Gallery (London) and Guillermo de Osma (Madrid) in the exhibition of one of the most prominent Spaniards of the Spanish postwar: Rafael Canogar - Traces (Paintings 1958 – 1962). This exhibition features fourteen emblematic paintings from the early 'Informal' phase (1958-62) when Canogar first made a name for himself. Canogar's work stood out in late 1950s Madrid as a founding member of the group El Paso, during a time of conservatism, social conformity, and oppression under General Franco. There, alongside other young artists such as Manolo Millares, Antonio Saura, Manuel Rivera, Matín Chirino, Luis Feito, and Manuel Viola, Canogar was responsible for creating a provocative and radically new gestural language of abstract painting that offered a fierce and visceral expression of a dynamic sense of energy and individual freedom. He was one of the pioneers of 'Informal' painting in Europe. Since these dramatic beginnings, Canogar's work has evolved over the past seventy years through a wide variety of styles and different mediums; each transformation reflects an equally impulsive and vivid personal response to the changing and often difficult times he has lived through.