(born in Toledo, Spain in 1935)
Pittura n. 50, 1959, signed and dated; signed and titled on the reverse, oil on canvas, 200 x 150 cm, framed

This work is registered in the online catalogue of the works by Rafael Canogar under no. 1959–033

www. rafaelcanogar. com/o bras/1959/498/

Provenance:
Galleria d’Arte L’Attico, Rome (label on the reverse)
European Private Collection

Exhibited:
Berlin, Arte Actual. Zeitgenössische spanische Malerei, AMT für Kunst, 26 September-30 October 1960
Cologne, Canogar, Galerie Anne Abels, 6 April-4 May 1962, exh. cat. p. 6 with ill. (dated 1960)
Rome, Canogar, Esse Arte, 19 April-18 May 1979, exh. cat. p. 12 with ill.
Madrid, Rafael Canogar. 25 anos de pintura, Salas de la Biblioteca Nacional, September-October 1982, exh. cat. p. 50 with ill.
Carceres, Canogar (exp. antologica, Museo Arte Contemporaneo Casa de los Caballos, 1983 (label on the reverse)
Paris, Rafael Canogar, Paris Art Center, 12 March-30 April; Bochum, Museum Bochum Kunstsammlung, 5 September-11 October 1987, exh. cat. p. 54 with ill.
Toledo, Canogar 1957–1997, Museo de Santa Cruz, May-July 1997; Ciudad Real, Museo de Ciudad Real, September-October 1997, Albacete, Museo de Albacete, November-December 1997, exh. cat. no. 2, p. 71 with ill.

Literature:
Guadalimar, Revista de las artes, Madrid, year VIII, no. 69, October-November 1982, with ill.
Canogar, Catalogo General, Ediciones Iberico 2 Mil, Barcelona 1992, vol. I, p. 242, no. 593 with ill.

[...] It was not until the mid-1950s that the impasse broke and informal energies flourished in Spain. The centre of this artistic attention was undoubtedly to be attributed to the new Madrid-based group El Paso, which included, amongst others, Millares, Rafel Canogar, Luis Feito and Antonio Saura, and which lasted from 1957 to 1960.
Canogar is the group’s most pre-eminent member. He encountered the new poetics at a young age, making his debut at only nineteen with a solo exhibition at the Galeria Altamira in Madrid. In 1956 he held a solo exhibition at Arnaud's in Paris, at the Numero in Florence and above all exhibited at the Venice Biennale, to which he would return in 1958 and 1959.
His informal research, which dates back to 1957, is marked by a full feeling for the material, which is both hated and loved, reminiscent of Tapies. But while Tapies appears static, lacerated in his grim mural silence, Canogar violently unloads his hand onto the canvases, scratching and corroding the pictorial paste with a dynamism heavy with tension. These are sign-like gashes in a dialectic rhythm between white and an unfathomable, arcane black. In these outpours of painting, the scream of the most authentic informal challenge rises up, creating drama absent from much of the rest of Europe.
R. Pasini, L'Informale: Stati Uniti, Europa, Italia, Bologna 1995, pp. 284-285