Rafael Canogar, a museum for the master of informalism: “Now a utopian horizon is missing”

Rafael Canogar, in his studio in Madrid on February 20. Álvaro García

When Rafael Canogar (Toledo, 88 years old) decided to follow the artistic vocation that awoke in him at the age of 14, the horizon line looked as clear as daylight.

It was a time in which Spain was crushed under the autarky of the dictatorship, so that the desired image of the future always returned the reflection of a fixed idea: freedom.

Both he and his contemporaries and colleagues from the El Paso group, founded in 1957, dedicated themselves to invoking it with brushstrokes, among whom were names such as Antonio Saura and Manolo Millares.

International events such as the 1958 Venice Biennale, in which young artists today featured in history books also participated, from Antoni Tàpies to Eduardo Chillida, positioned that generation—and with it, a country that was lagging behind— at the forefront of the international art scene.

A pioneer of informalism, material painting that aspires to capture the truth hidden in the gesture, Canogar did not want to remain stagnant in success.

Since 1964, the painter embarked on a new stage focused on social realism in substance and the search for three-dimensionality in form, to turn again, in the mid-seventies, towards an essential abstraction.

From this point begins the permanent exhibition dedicated to him by his hometown, Toledo, an exhibition sponsored by the Royal Toledo Foundation that will be renewed “from time to time,” located in what is known as Espacio Rafael Canogar.

Inaugurated on February 23, the room brings together 31 works made between 1973 and 2022 which, the artist concedes, could be replaced by many others.

With around 6,000 pieces created, there is something to choose from.

“Now there are two very important periods missing in my previous career, such as informalism and realism,” the painter explains.

“But I also have four hundred or so editions of graphic work, so an exhibition could be made with just that, or even with the works from my collection, or those of my sons [Daniel Canogar, multimedia artist, and Diego Canogar, sculptor]. , who are also artists.”

Rafael Canogar – born Rafael García Cano – chats while sitting on one of the two spacious sofas placed in an L shape next to the fabulous translucent windows of his studio in the center of Madrid.

Walking through this two-story space flooded with light and works of art that rest on the walls is very similar to walking through the rooms of a museum.

Not only are there pieces scattered about by the artist, but also by other creators for which he has not found space to store them.

From among his paintings, Canogar points out some that were on the market and he himself has acquired to incorporate them into his collection.

He also stops at several new creations, abstract paintings on methacrylate (which returns the reflection of the viewer) produced in his most recent pictorial stage, which started “just before the pandemic” and which was born from a longing for “beauty and spirituality.” .

Rafael Canogar, in his studio in Madrid.

Alvaro Garcia

Between the “cry for freedom” of his ancient creations and the current “search for essentiality”, both connected, 70 years of painting have passed that, in some way, close a circle by returning, in the formal sense, to abstraction of the origins.

On the social level—because creation is not carried out in a vacuum—the artist believes that formative experiences of his personality such as that of May 1968 do not find a good translation in the present after 15-M.

“It wasn't so romantic or, if you will, so utopian.

He advocated ending castes and they ended up almost immediately being castes too,” he says.

“On the other hand, in a meeting I have had with a young artist, it has been criticized that in certain rooms of the Reina Sofía the works from the permanent collection were taken down to place what was left behind by 15-M.

The museum has another purpose.

That can be kept or put in another public space, but not in a museum, which has the function of showing what contemporary artists, national and foreign, do, and not showing a political movement.”

Although the El Paso Group also had a marked political drive, for Canogar the difference lies in the fact that “now that utopian horizon is missing, that goal to achieve.”

Also, in that his view was not “populist.”

For the artist, we now find ourselves in a moment of “revision”, a downward spiral: “You only have to read, in recent days, the discussions that museums are in: the colonial, etc.

And it turns out that the Iberian is also considered colonial.

They are revisions that you have to go through a lot to find something coherent,” he says.

Which does not mean, in any case, that reviewing is not useful and even necessary.

Hence, the meaning of Canogar's search for a “universal language” has changed over time because, for the artist, settling into what is known inevitably ends up leading to failure.

“When the same aesthetic concepts are repeated over and over again, when they become excessively dominated, a certain academicism begins,” he reflects.

With attention divided between several exhibitions of his work spread between Spain and abroad and one eye on the next Arco edition, where he will take several paintings, Canogar demands greater visibility for the works of artists from the 1950s and 1960s.

“I think we need to look back a little and get back on that path, because there are fewer and fewer new things that no one has ever done, it's increasingly difficult to get attention,” he says.

“I have a long career and I have always experienced the avant-garde very closely, and I have seen things that had a tremendous impact but that also happened very quickly: an artist whose action was to vomit in public, another work that consisted of getting into a bathtub with meat for 10 days until the meat began to rot, etc.

Things that no one remembers today,” he points out.

“However, a good painting will always be recognized.”

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