Although it is not the first time that the work of both artists can be seen together (between 2019 and 2020, and curated by Ana Doldán and Francisco Baena, directors, respectively, of the Esteban Vicente Museum in Segovia and the José Guerrero Center in Granada, toured by the extraordinary Guerrero / Vicente), the exhibition is novel by focusing only on the last decades of the artists’ production. In the gallery, we intentionally borrow the title of the aforementioned museum exhibition to which we add Last Decades, which could actually have been shortened to “Last Decade”, since almost all the canvases on display were painted in the last ten years of life of the two painters. In fact, the latest of Guerrero’s was painted in 1990, months before his death, and the oldest of Vicente’s was made in 1991, the year the artist from Granada left us.
In these last works Guerrero and Vicente defend, more than ever, their radically opposite, but absolutely valid ways of confronting painting. If in Guerrero painting freedom is taken to the extreme in the use of color that appears framed, or only indicated, or limited by the edge of the canvas and by the presence of black that defines, supports or accentuates, depending on the painting, the totality of the work. In the vicentes - in which not by chance, there is no presence of black, so fundamental for Guerrero and of which he said that his absence “makes us remember that he has been there” - the color serves as a diluted background on which other colors are presented harmoniously distributed throughout the space.
Faced with the color contained by the format of the canvas and the presence of the everlasting black of Guerrero, we find the pleinairist Vicente in whom the degraded color on the canvas turns it into an open window, but not limited by the physical space of the work or another color that prevents him from overdoing himself, being able to put, in Vicente’s mouth, this thought of Guerrero: “color spreads, never stops” (1988). It is about, it could be said, color as an object in Guerrero’s work versus color as a subject – in its sense of support – in Vicente’s work.
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"Últimas décadas", José Guerrero y Esteban Vicente, 2021
It is also about Guerrero’s final work as a reflection of his experiences because, using Vicente’s words in the sixties, “I think that what appears in your painting is an accumulation of experiences” 1, that is, a painting made by looking at its interior window (the “liberation of his inner world” of which Yolanda Romero speaks) opposite to the work of a Vicente who dedicated his last years as a painter looking out the window of his garden in Bridgehampton.
- Esteban Vicente to Irving Sandler (1968), in Elizabeth Frank, Esteban Vicente, New York, 1995, p. 52.
- Yolanda Romero, Translocations, 1968-1976, in the catalogue of Meeting of blues exibition, Galería Cayón, Madrid, February-April, 2017.
José Guerrero and Esteban Vicente have two institutions in their cities of origin: the José Guerrero Center in Granada and the Esteban Vicente Museum of Contemporary Art in Segovia. The work of both artists is part of the main national and international museums and collections.
José Guerrero painting in 1977 at his studio. Courtesy of Centro José Guerrero.
José Guerrero’s work is part of, among others: the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Museum of Modern Art, MoMA, New York; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, MNCARS, Madrid; Patio Herreriano, Museum of Contemporary Spanish Art, Valladolid; Helga de Alvear Museum of Contemporary Art, Caceres or the Juan March Foundation, Madrid.
Esteban Vicente’s work is part of, among others: the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, MoMA, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Ameringer / Yohe / Fine Art, New York; the Reina Sofía National Art Center Museum, MNCARS, Madrid; Institut Valencià d’Art Modern, IVAM, Valencia; Museu d’Art Contermporani de Barcelona, MACBA; Helga de Alvear Museum of Contemporary Art, Caceres or Patio Herreriano, Museum of Spanish Contemporary Art, Valladolid.
Credits:
Courtesy of Galería Cayón Madrid/Manila/Menorca, 2021.
Photography © Joaquín Cortés Noriega.
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