Galería Vilaseco | A Coruña | 24.11.2022 > 27.01.2023
Traza is the very first solo exhibition by Álvaro Negro at Vilaseco Gallery. For this show ten unseen pieces have been selected, all of them painted over the last few months in the artist’s studio in Agolada (Pontevedra) and in the same style of work as the painting project undertaken in Rome, after his stay in the Royal Academy of Spain. Abstract works that evokes a tradition of western painting that is as closely related in history as the Italian and the Spanish. The artist mention as references some works of artists such as Giotto or Lorenzo Lotto, not only for the colour palette and the textures but also by the detailed observation of fresco painting.
In the works of this exhibition it can also be observed a return to the painting made by the artist in its beginnings, like the pieces of the Traza series, essentialists in the mere use of the graphite and the glaze, as it happened in pictures like Candán (1996), which title refers to the homonymous mountain system, Álvaro Negro’s childhood landscape.
There are also traces of another of his key referents, Lucio Muñoz, painter whom he met at a workshop for young artists given in A Coruña and with whom he would end up collaborating in the making of his last mural, The unfinished city (1998), located in the chamber of Madrid Assembly. This experience has always been claimed by Ávaro Negro as a key moment on his artistic training. In some works of this exhibition can be found clear tributes to the artist from Madrid, both for the use of the pictorical matter -with pictures of great relief and impasto- and for chromaticisms that also refer to most spiritual essence of the Spanish painting tradition.
As a continuation of the exhibition, Vilaseco will launch an artist’s book featuring the latest works by Álvaro Negro, edited and published by the gallery, with texts by María de la Vega.
