Josep Guinovart

(Barcelona, 1927-2007)

Author's artworks
20th-21st Century, Spanish
 
This Catalan painter and engraver trained at La Lonja Arts and Crafts School in Barcelona.

A member of the
group, in the early fifties Guinovart received a scholarship to study in Paris. Years later he founded the Tahull group, a short-lived collective whose members included Antoni Tàpies (1923-2012) and Joan-Josep Tharrats (1918-2001), among other artists.

Apart from suites of prints and paintings, he created set designs for the theatre, mural works, illustrations and posters. From the mid-fifties onwards Guinovart’s practice evolved towards abstraction, culminating in the late-fifties in his experiments with a variety of materials, including clay, tree trunks, stone, etc. Throughout the fifties he travelled to Mexico and Cuba, attracted by the cultural exoticism of these countries, so different from Western society.

In 1994, Espai Guinovart, a museum dedicated to the artist, opened in his mother’s hometown of Agramunt, where visitors can get an insight into Guinovart’s life work through a wide-ranging selection of his creations.

His works have been seen in many solo and group exhibitions in Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao, New York, Luxembourg and in many other European and American cities. Particularly outstanding among his countless distinctions is Spain’s National Visual Arts Prize in 1982 and his appointment as Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the Ministry of Culture of the French Republic in 1984.