- Artist:
- Ferran Garcia Sevilla
- Date:
- 1990
- Technique:
- Mixed technique on canvas
- Dimensions:
- 195 x 195 cm
- Origin:
- Es Baluard Museu d'Art Contemporani de Palma, Fundació Caixa de Balears collection long-term loan
- Registration number:
- 382
The pictorial production of Ferran Garcia Sevilla is doubtless one of the exponents of the renovation and consecration of the painting of the 1980s, and his work is a benchmark of the era, in spite of his having been one of the most controversial and “uncomfortable” artists of the post-modern Spanish art system.
In Sama 26 (1990), we are confronted with a work that may be framed within the change his career underwent in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. The painter, now present on the international circuits, inaugurated an exhibition entitled “Sama” in the Lelong gallery in New York. In it he presented the series of the same name and introduced images of different parts of the body. Hands, feet, or plural arrows – as in the case of this picture from the collection – inundate his colourful canvases. Their entire symbolism can be taken as a free appropriation of the everyday world that surrounds him, creating a dense personal poetry.
Garcia Sevilla’s work denotes dynamism and strength, he himself would admit that he paints “in the heat of the moment”, allowing his creativity to flow without adhering to any pre-established style, but making use of his own glossary of shapes, images and references. With his works, the painter suggests poetic settings by way of fragmented narratives, full of abstract elements or everyday objects, which orbit over the central themes of his oeuvre. Life, death, identity itself, sex or the nature of love are aspects on which Garcia Sevilla reflects, always leaving the interpretation open to the spectator’s connection with the work.
C.J.
Ferran Garcia Sevilla moved to Barcelona in 1969 to study History of Art and Modern and Contemporary History and has lived there ever since. His beginnings in the 1970s are situated in the sphere of conceptualism, questioning the function of art, the artist and consumption from a range of disciplines such as video and photography. He was one of the main exponents of the consecration of painting in Europe in the early 1980s, a decade in which he received international acclaim and exhibited not only in Spain, but also in France, the United Kingdom and Japan. His works from these years were influenced by Albert Ràfols-Casamada, Antoni Tàpies and, above all, Joan Miró. The use of drips and rapid brushwork are a reference to the characteristic primitivism of this pictorial genre, combined towards the end of the decade with his ironic phrases and the inclusion of such everyday objects as books and shoes, highlighting the free association of sign and image. He broadened the content of his images in the early 1990s with parts of the human body (hands, feet and so on) and gradually became increasingly introspective, with intersections and overlaps of elements such as drip and line. In 1998 García Sevilla gave up exhibiting, though he continued to paint, until 2007 when he exhibited in the Galeria Joan Prats in Barcelona.
He took part in the 1986 Venice Biennial as well as in the 1987 Documenta in Kassel, and the following institutions stand out among the Spanish and international museums in which he has exhibited: the Fondation Cartier in Paris (1997), the IVAM in Valencia (1998), the Malmö Konsthall, Sweden (1998), the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid (2001) and the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin (2010). Public and private collections that own his work include the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Fundació ”la Caixa” in Barcelona, Fundaçao Serralves in Oporto and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, among others.
E.B.
