Juan Uslé, this you come, between two of his works that are exhibited in Bombas Gens de Valencia.Mònica Torres
The 66-year-old Juan Uslé, from Santander, has never denied painting.
When it began to be said in Spain that painting was dead (a mantra that is repeated periodically), the creator left to live in New York in the mid-eighties, "to meet the pictorial expression" associated with the city and also the closer to him, like abstract expressionism.
In some paintings from that decade, which will be exhibited from this Friday at Bombas Gens in Valencia, the influence of the Dutch artist Willem de Kooning is noticeable, although the abstraction of Uslé, one of the Spanish artists with the greatest international projection, continues a particular journey that penetrates the rivers of the interior and vital landscape and the meanders of emotion.
Juan Uslé, strokes of a life
“I am passionate about painting, which has never died, much less now.
Painting is alive if it has an emotional component, something vital that escapes from the form, from the design, do you remember what you said about studying or designing?
There was an attitude of resistance.
In Spain we had an inferiority complex and we manifested ourselves in a very radical way.
It is true that my generation lacked a lot of information.
The moderns were the ones who were the most informed, not the best, nor the most intelligent, ”he tells EL PAÍS in the room that houses his works from the 1990s in the
Juan Uslé
exhibition
.
Eye and landscape,
which can be seen until September 12.
The painter, accompanied by his wife, the also renowned artist Victoria Civera, moved to Brooklyn when a mythical atmosphere still existed around the city crossed by the Hudson River, especially among artists.
“You still thought that being in New York was the place where things happened then.
Now things happen inside us, because we are secluded.
And also, with the Internet, you can see from anywhere what is happening around the world at the same time.
It is not necessary to go to New York, but to have an open mind and a very closed soul ”, he explains solicitously, with a slow speech.
National Prize of Plastic Arts in 2002 and with individual exhibitions in museums such as the Reina Sofía in Madrid, the IVAM in Valencia or the Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig in Vienna, Uslé now lives between Saro (Cantabria), Benissa (Alicante) and New York.
Its recurring themes are the sea, water, rivers and the landscape, as reflected in the exhibition that brings together around 55 paintings, most of them in large format and made from the eighties to the present, and 13 drawings never exhibited. plus some photographs.
The starting point of the exhibition are three works from the collection of Fundació Per Amor a l'Art, the entity that owns the private center Bombas Gens and of which Vicent Todolí is the advisor.
The former director of the Tate Modern in London is the curator of the exhibition together with the current director of the IVAM and former head of Bombas Gens, Nuria Enguita.
Todolí highlighted in the presentation this morning the landscape as the central theme and the presence of the river as the "horizon of dreams and fantasies" in a large part of his works.
Vicent Todolí: "I am a collector, but not of works of art but of citrus"
In this sense, Uslé pointed out that “life is like rivers, like the lines that appear in paintings”, it is “that emotion that keeps you alive thinking about what you can do”.
The creator stressed that Bombas Gens has not sought "an aesthetic result" but has "delved looking for intensity."
In addition, he was "happy to see these works now after the inevitable fear of the idea of looking at the past and knowing that the encounter with works and events that we barely remember awaits us."
He also expressed his emotion when remembering that he lived as a student of Fine Arts in Valencia, where he met his wife, in a house very close to the old
art deco
factory
of hydraulic pumps, now rehabilitated and transformed into an art center.
The vice president of the foundation, Susan Lloret, and the current artistic director of the center, Sandra Guimarães, also participated in the presentation, which attracted several gallery owners, critics and artists, as well as journalists.