Joaquín Capa

(Santander, 1941)

Untitled

20th century

Print (aquatint and drypoint) on paper (P.A.)

50 x 65 cm

Inv. no. 33267

BBVA Collection Spain


Capa earned a reputation both in Spain and internationally as a painter and printmaker focused generally on abstraction and expressiveness through the use of colour.
 
Born in Santander, he moved to Madrid to enrol at the San Fernando School of Fine Arts where he studied under Antonio López (1936) and Juan Barjola (1919-2004). In the seventies he travelled to Paris, where he entered into contact with the avant-garde print methods of the time. During his period there he worked as an assistant at
, run by the British artist Stanley William Hayter (1901-1988), where he experimented with the use of colour in printmaking.
 
From an early stage the artist opted for conceptual ideas. He was keenly aware of maintaining distance from objective materiality in his restless pursuit for authenticity, giving rise to an intimate artistic output which always seemed to strike the beholder as somewhat familiar.
 
His prints as well as his paintings are recognisable for the rendition of a language of signs immerse in an endlessly experimental chromatic universe based on degradations of blues, oranges, reds and purples that convey to the spectator a kind of dreamlike world.