Juan Luis Goenaga

(San Sebastián, 1950-2024)

Untitled

1986

Oil on canvas

61.3 x 70.4 cm

Inv. no. P03533_R



Juan Luis Goenaga’s work is the result of manifold influences, combining his close bond with landscape, with different places and their histories, with readings, personal experiences and cultural references. His practice oscillates constantly between figuration and abstraction, with the two languages coexisting in many of his works.

In the early-1980s, the evolution of Goenaga’s artistic language was profoundly affected by a trip to Germany, where he came into direct contact with German Neo-Expressionism, a movement that reinforced the concerns already visible in his earlier work in series such as Antropomorfos (Anthropomorphs) and Andróginos (Androgynes). This influence was further reinforced by the Italian Transavantgarde, with which he shared a free, intuitive attitude removed from rigid approaches. As a result, his painting became more intense and physical: he started to apply matter thickly and forcefully onto the canvas, employing dense impasto and an energetic gesturality that imbued his compositions with greater dynamism and expressive force, as can be seen in this work from the BBVA Collection dating from 1986.

During the 1990s, he returned to the primitive and the archaic in series inspired by archaeology, with forms and marks redolent of cave painting. By the turn of the century, these elements were combined with a renewed chromatic luminosity that gave rise to more open and vital compositions.