Page 76 - Studio International - May 1974

UK Reviews realism to create new visual becoming littered with junk metal. It
sensations without deforming them.' seems clear that Spanish artists, in
Manuel Hernandez Mompó tries to their fight for freedom of speech, have
Contemporary Spanish Art
'remove the idea of the limits of the quite forgotten freedom of thought.
at Marlborough Fine Art, London,
picture', failing for me because one Tony Rothon
21 March-6 April.
could so obviously carry one of his
The Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes
sensitively doodled-on canvases
de San Fernando, Madrid, has a John Golding at the Rowan
under one's arm. The sculptor
reputation amongst the other art Gallery, London, 15 March-4 April.
Feliciano Hernandez defines
academies in Spain, for the innovatory Fred Pollock at the Garage, London,
sculpture rather neatly and makes the
daring with which staff organize life- 13-30 March.
claim that his artistic search is rather
class figure-groups as juxtapositions It's good to see an artist working
a deep investigation into the activity.
of stuffed dolls, classical statuary and within a basically familar format and
His brightly painted iron and steel
nude models; the still-life set-ups are infusing it with something of his own
wire piece confirms little more than a
equally bizarre. There, a particular personality. John Golding at the
knowledge of elementary physics.
approach to drawing and painting Antonio Cleve Trois Gants 1972 Rowan shows large canvases that
isn't encouraged ; it's enforced. Oil and collage on canvas. 130 x 130 cm. Juan Haro, a 42-year-old sculptor in have been divided into two
Charcoal drawings in full light and rectangular solid colour areas.
shade lead to more of the same but Between their edges and the canvas
this time on the canvas, a violent edge runs a strip within which is
banging of the surface to remove contained most of the pictures'
excess charcoal signalling the first incident. So our concentration shifts
application, with a flourish, of colour between taking in the large
from a hand-held palette. ungraduated blocks of colour that set.
The course in how to be Goya up a key hue contrast in each painting,
before he went mad is a long one, and like lemon and mauve or chrome and
pays no heed to the fact that by the lilac-grey, and an inch by inch
time a student reaches his final year, scanning of the various hand-jotted
Goya's life has sunk even deeper into and multi-coloured notations in the
history. Velazquez is to be revered, one margins. The structural intervals are
is wary of El Greco ; Goya is to be calculated to a nicety, and
emulated. throughout one feels the presence of
A large proportion of the artists a refined sensibility at work. But the
represented in the survey of longer one spends in front of these
contemporary Spanish art (organized pictures, the more aware one becomes
and sponsored by the Juan March of a basic unease between the way
Foundation) at the Marlborough are they look and the way they are made.
products of this peculiarly non-liberal There can be no criticism per se of the
education, but what unites the fact that they are reminiscent in their
forty-one artists in this show, whose Feliciano Hernandez Hierro pintado y cable format lay-out of John Hoyland's
de Acero 1973. 230 x 88 x 135 cm.
ages differ by as much as 30 years, has work of about five years ago, and
little to do with the practice of of the rest of Europe, and of North that in places the handling recalls
furthering the Spanish tradition 'as- America, as clues to their pathway to more recent paintings by John Walker.
known' or 'as-taught'. That was liberty. Where one does become critical,
Picasso's area and he took himself far Each artist in the show, with the however, is in realizing that whereas
over the Pyrenees to play out his exception of Juan Genovés, whose both the Hoylands and the Walkers
classically conceived adventure, the images of oppression, along with looked as though they'd been
heroic dimensions of which will not be those of Canogar, explain themselves discovered in the making, the
diminished by the slow but inevitable away, either writes a few lines or is Goldings seem almost to have been
conclusion that essentially it was not briefly written about in the done from a mental blue-print. Of
so different from the dull happening Marlborough's highly priced course, a lot of good work does get
which originated in the academies. In catalogue. (The Juan March made this way, but not things that
Picasso's case only the proportions Foundation's price for the same pretend to some degree of spontaneity.
are different, not the gestures. publication is considerably less.) It is the punctuation business in the
The old arts were buried with him ; Fernando Zobel, who together with margins x drips, sponge marks, and
'Spanish Contemporary Art' has come Torner and Rueda founded the Antonio Sauro Poliptico 1963 in particular the hand-drawn marks—
from very different sources, and Museum of Spanish Abstract Art in Oil on canvas. 143 x 128 cm. that look fabricated, and call
its unity as a show is in the Cuenca, talks about himself in the attention to his failing most acutely.
uncomfortable feeling which each following way. 'In general, my work is stone whose works sport such titles as These paintings do have a certain
work emits that something apart from abstract and lyrical. I am interested in Fight between the Doctor and Death, dignity, but ultimately they seem over
commitment defines the various the possibility of transmitting as and Embrace :' My figuration is fastidious, and unable to sustain
activities. This is a show of artists, clearly as possible (and, therefore, deprived of all academical vestiges one's initially favourable response.
representing many more, who have abstractly), those mysterious and I dream of establishing my own Faced with the basic problem of
taken to the formal innovations of the relations that give me a sense of sign of communication with the how to lay down colour, non-
culturally more nihilistic European beauty". He is talking about the contemporaries, through my art as a figurative artists now have, broadly
countries and, of course, the States, relations of finely blended pastel function of my time.' Perhaps the speaking, two main approaches open
worked their way to stardom in the tones and one line per canvas sense loses a little in translation. to them. One, currently fashionable,
isolation from which Spain has applied with a hypodermic needle. Amadeo Gabino, a 42-year old is to allow the colour the freedom to
always suffered, and now, in London, Homage to Lucio Fontana is an sculptor in iron and stainless steel, find its own form. Technically, this
look strangely out of date. amusing one, the work of Juan makes 'mystical blocks', 'lunar usually means working on canvas
The sadness of the exhibition, Hernandez Pijuan. Instead of armour, solar helmet'... 'suggests a laid on the floor, and pouring the
however, is not in the degree to which Fontana's slit in the canvas which the new dialogue with the life of men'. In paint to avoid any semblance of
the exhibits look dated, but in mind crawls through back to the 1961 he took a Ford Foundation manual control. The picture's final
the degree to which a formal womb, Pijuan neatly divides his pink Scholarship to study in New York, has dimensions are decided by cropping
identification of art and a formal canvas down the centre with a gained a major prize for industrial before the canvas is stretched. The
appreciation of art is made to look pencil-line and reveals one painted design and recently showed at the other approach is to work within
wholly bankrupt in the face of an handle of the pair of scissors which Juana Mordo Gallery in Madrid ; the predetermined limits on a stretched
ideological struggle brought about has just completed the illusionary show was terrifying. More terrifying canvas, using a fairly simple range of
by the existence of Spanish canvas-slitting mission. He writes, is that the Spanish public has just hit forms, and gradually tuning up the
Academies. It is, moreover, sadder 'My concern is plastic space. To upon the idea of sculpture for public colour to the right pitch. Fred Pollock
that contemporary Spanish artists isolate objects or actual forms, with places and the Direccion General de chooses the latter. At worst, this
should see the nihilistic endeavours the intention of giving them a great Bellas Artes is obliging : cities are approach can easily degenerate into