JUAN GENOVES (1930 - 2020) Lot n° 4

Cuatro Caminos, 2006 Acrylic on canvas, signed and dated lower right Acrylic on canvas, signed and dated lower right 200 x 210 cm 78 47/64 x 82 43/64 in. PROVENANCE Galeria Manel Mayoral, Barcelona, 2006 Private collection, Belgium Born in Valencia in 1930 and died in Madrid in 2020, Juan Genovés was a Spanish painter and graphic artist. A committed artist, he liked to question the role of the artist and his place in society. As expressionist as he was provocative and anti-Franco, Juan Genovés questioned the mechanisms of dictatorship by contrasting the individual with the crowd. His apparently simple canvases conceal a great underlying complexity. Abstract up close, they take on their full meaning when viewed from a greater distance. The human figures, indefinite and swarming, play a secondary role despite their omnipresence in the composition. They fade into the background to make way for the movement they produce and the context in which they evolve. Visually rich, his works can be read on several levels. The resulting images are intended to challenge those created by the mass media, and to denounce the human manipulation that results from their use. Abhorring authoritarian policies, Genovés sees the crowd as a social catalyst. Yet, beyond the sense of oppression they provoke, Juan Genovés' canvases are undeniably poetic. Colorful and lively, they teem with detail. To visually widen the gap between the one and the many, the individual is represented in collage form, while crowds are painted more graphically. The artist's play on textures and the thickness of the different layers of paint produce a whole spectrum of objects, buildings and characters, all interacting with each other, in so many choreographies improvised by a form of collective unconsciousness. "The whole question is already there: should we consider the crowd as a living being, endowed with autonomous qualities, irreducible to the individuals who make it up? Is there more to the crowd than the sum of its parts? When you get up close, each figure is unique in its pose, attitude and colors, yet at the same time an integral part of the group. Millimeterized, Genovés' canvases take on a meditative quality, and the imaginary movements of these static crowds have the bewitching, psychedelic allure of a kaleidoscope. The 2006 painting Cuatro Caminos depicts one of the crowd movements so characteristic of the artist's style. The figures, coming from four different directions, seem to meet at the center of the canvas, as if drawn by an invisible force. The light is low and the shadows are stretched, reinforcing the sense of strangeness provoked by this mysterious procession. If it's impossible to know what brings these figures together in this place, it's ultimately the absence of them from certain areas of the canvas that will intrigue viewers the most. Seemingly avoiding the shadows, gathering in a perfect circle around an invisible object, it is ultimately the unexplained potential of this crowd that fascinates most.