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Sicilia

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Jose Maria Sicilia was born in Madrid in 1954 and is one of the most significant representatives of Spanish painting in the 1980s. He began his artistic career by studying at the School of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid before moving to Paris in 1980. In Paris, he encountered other Spanish artists such as Miquel Barceló and Miguel Ángel Campano, who, along with José Manuel Broto and Ferrán García Sevilla, were influential figures in Spanish painting during that period.

Since his arrival in France, Sicilia has worked on large formats, and his painting has shown a constant evolution. His work is organized into pictorial series that bring together still lifes and representations of household tools and utensils (vacuum cleaners, irons, scissors, buckets, etc.), as well as views of urban landscapes in Madrid and Paris.

During the mid-1980s, he gained recognition in Spain, France, and New York with paintings marked by the freedom of gesture, the violence of color, and the dynamism of the stroke. His solo exhibition in 1982 at the Trans/Form gallery in Paris, the presentation of his work in Spain in 1984 by gallerist Fernando Vijande, and his solo exhibition at the Blum Helman gallery in New York in 1985 marked the beginning of a career that has found a solid place in the history of contemporary Spanish painting.

The exhibition at the Palacio de Velázquez in Madrid consists of twenty-six canvases, mostly three meters square, along with a group of sixteen works divided into two series with an elongated and tall format. All of them are part of José María Sicilia’s most recent work, the result of a long period of research and a testament to a profound transformation.

The image of the flower, which first appeared in his works in New York, is one of the few figurative traces that separate the artist from complete abstraction and is the dominant motif in this exhibition. The acrylic paintings in the exhibition summarize a way of conceiving painting inherited from geometric art, while also intertwining family influences reminiscent of abstract expressionism.

The artist himself actively participated in selecting the works for this exhibition, a part of which was previously presented at the CAPC Musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux at the end of 1987. These works have now arrived in the halls of the Palacio de Velázquez as a cohesive group of paintings that showcase Sicilia’s solid career and extensive journey. (www.museoreinasofia.es)

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