The creative career of Pepa Caballero (1943-2012) comes out of the shadows and is now illuminated with an anthological exhibition, curated by two professors from the University of Malaga, which covers more than 40 years of work and experimentation. The exhibition proposal stands out for its clean and well-structured setup that makes perfect use of the spaces and rooms of the CAAC’s East Claustron, distributing the contents by grouping of stages and series from his participation in the Palmo Collective to his latest creations. Related news standard Yes REVIEW OF: ‘Land in white’, by Rosell Meseguer, in the Sala Verónicas: telluric counterstories Juan Francisco Rueda standard Yes REVIEW OF: Juana Francés and Rosario de Velasco, two ‘exceptional exceptions’ Juan Bautista PeiróThis group, active from the late 1970s until well into the following decade, like the Picasso Group or the Peña Montmartre had been years before, was another milestone in the search for alternative languages ​​that would renew a peripheral landscape still anchored in academicisms. In the latter case it was not so much about publicizing international currents as creating an internal cultural dynamism that would bring Málaga out of its lethargy, while at the same time making personal dictions visible, almost all of them very close to Informalism. The group would be made up of a series of founding members – Dámaso Ruano, Jorge Lindell and Caballero herself – who would later be joined by Manuel Barbadillo, Enrique Brinkmann and Stefan von Reiswitz, among others. Residual attention It has been argued that criticism and historiography have paid residual attention to plastic initiatives that emerged far from the centers of cultural power, and it is possible that the reason for all this lies in an excessively centralist view, but not It is less true that perhaps the fact of ignoring some of these manifestations was caused by much more prosaic reasons. Some of these individual or collective discourses did not conform to the predominant fashions of figurative recharge that were taking over the commercial circuits in the 1980s. And, although some members of the collective opted to investigate the multiple paths that abstraction allowed, its primary value was heterogeneity and the ability to bring together and promote various artistic activities, among which the production of graphic work stood out. Caballero’s first production, marked by the reduction of the chromatic range and the acceptance of geometric patterns that distill, as in almost all of his work, certain architectural references, will give way, once he settles in Zamora for a decade, to a fragmented and repetitive look, as can be seen in the series ‘After the pruning’ (1988-92). It is likely that the brushwork and modularity derive from a detailed study of the post-impressionist lexicon, although perhaps the imprint of the harsh Castilian land left on the Granada painter the same mark that decades ago marked DÃaz-Caneja, BenjamÃn Palencia and the first and second Vallecas School. In full color. From top to bottom, ‘Variations on the Annunciation by Fra Angelico’; ‘Towards freedom’ (2002); and ‘Ofelia’ (2006) Pepa Caballero From here on, the following series, regardless of the chromaticism chosen, become clearer and brighter. The geometry reaches unusual levels of purity in its linearity, delimiting stripes that are juxtaposed and balanced in an exercise of synthesis that is reminiscent of both constructive rationalism and classical monumentality. Thus, the series ‘Parthenon’ (1992-1997) or ‘Mediterranean’ (1999-2000) emerged, which soon included effects of transparency, even trompe l’oeil, reminiscent of the first and third of the Pompeian styles of painting, according to the classification that August Mau established at the end of the 19th century. Restless and traveling artist, great reader, lover of poetry, history and classical culture, her evocations of León Felipe (egregio Zamorano exiled) in ‘Lower poets, lower’ (2002) or Alberti (‘El mar la mar’, 2002), soon become references for plastic experimentation such as the one that motivates his unbreakable will to return to the home that the Homeric hero undertakes in the series ‘Ithaca’ (2006). He is also interested in the figure of Ofelia – in the polyptych ‘Ofelia nº 2’ (2004) and the large acrylic ‘Ofelia’ (2006) – within the ‘Flotation’ series. In the image that Caballero draws, the Shakespearean character is not claimed as the fatal subject of love betrayal, but rather – based on the image generated by Millais and Cabanel – his formal (and corporal) border, liminal, condition is explored. halfway between two essential stages: the aerial and the aquatic. Reviewing successive stages, one notices his interest – as happens with many other abstract painters – in investigating the genetic keys of his diction, diving into the History of Past Art as pristine sources. The detail with which he analyzes the work of an illustrious representative of the Renaissance is very unique. In ‘The angels of Fra Angélico play the lute’ (2002), ‘On the Annunciation of Fra Angélico’ (2009) or ‘Variations on the Annunciation of Fra Angélico’ (2011) gold appears as a symbolic color and, later, the diagonal as an element projected towards vanishing points and shaper of the third dimension. Pepa Caballero ‘Abstract Constellations’. CAAC. Seville. Avda. Américo Vespuccio, s/n. Commissioners: Carmen Cortés and Isabel Garnelo. Until May 4th. Four stars.If she was a pioneer among female creators in adopting (and staying in) the dictions of abstraction, she was also a pioneer in transferring her pictorial formulations to a public and accessible dimension through large urban murals. Following a more social and less commercial trail than that developed in the ceramic mural of the Milan Apartments, in Fuengirola (1970), by Barbadillo, this endeavor crystallized in 1985 with an intervention in the Malaga neighborhood of El Palo, in a building where she herself resided.
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