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.