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Abstract adventures in New York City

Fundació Suñol brings to Barcelona an exhibition of José Guerrero's work from the artist's time in New York in the 1950s and 60s that helped define Spanish postwar painting

When José Guer­rero ar­rived in New York in 1949 he landed in the new art cap­i­tal. Ab­stract ex­pres­sion­ism was now king, and his first sight of a Jack­son Pol­lock moved him: “It was like burn­ing up in­side. A fire that urged me to paint. Every time I saw those works, I looked at them with such in­ten­sity that af­ter­wards I had to find a win­dow to see the sky and iden­tify some­thing that was fa­mil­iar to me,” was how the artist ex­pressed his feel­ings.

As a painter, Guer­rero found com­pe­ti­tion in New York, but forged a path that raised him to the level of his Amer­i­can col­leagues. From the start things went well, with a se­ries of key ex­hi­bi­tions shared with artists like Joan Miró and local painters.

This part of the painter's life (1950-1966) is cov­ered by the ex­hi­bi­tion in Barcelona's Fun­dació Suñol. After time in the artist's home­town of Granada and then Madrid, the ex­hi­bi­tion com­mem­o­rates the birth cen­te­nary of an artist that re­newed Span­ish post-war paint­ing. Or­gan­ised by the Cen­tro José Guer­rero in Granada and the Pa­tronato de la Al­ham­bra y Gen­er­al­ife, the ex­hi­bi­tion in­cludes 50 works, many never be­fore dis­played and oth­ers from dif­fer­ent gal­leries and Amer­i­can col­lec­tions.

Even­tu­ally the in­flu­ence of ac­tion paint­ing im­posed it­self and Guer­rero in­cor­po­rated colour­ful blotches, paint drips and over­lap­ping lay­ers of colour in large for­mats. Fel­low painter, Luis Gordillo, de­fined the new work as “chro­matic en­gi­neer­ing”.

The ex­hi­bi­tion sub­head, The pres­ence of black, al­ludes to the show that Guer­rero had in the in­flu­en­tial Betty Par­sons gallery. How­ever, when pop art dis­placed ab­stract ex­pres­sion­ism in New York in the 1960s, Guer­rero re­turned to Spain.

The ex­hi­bi­tion runs until Sep­tem­ber 5.

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