The jury points out his career as “essential for weaving together the critical history of Spanish art” since the 1980s
Rogelio López Cuenca is more than comfortable on the margins of the currents that make art a spectacle. That is why he receives with as much “surprise as satisfaction” the National Prize for Plastic Arts, endowed with 30,000 euros and awarded annually by the Ministry of Culture and Sports.
The jury that awarded him noted that his career “is essential for weaving together the critical history of Spanish art from the 1980s to the present.”
In addition, he highlights that «his work is based on a commitment to historical time and to the territory in which he has lived, the transformations and continuities of Spanish society at the turn of the century, the violence and dislocations that globalization entails. At the same time, he is interested in invoking the silenced memories of the past and the way in which imposed silences order real and symbolic space in the present».
poetry and philology
Born in Nerja (Málaga) in 1959, López Cuenca has a degree in Philosophy and Letters from the University of Malaga and a doctorate in Fine Arts from the University of Castilla-La Mancha. He has worked since the beginning of his career, in the 1980s, at the crossroads of poetry with the visual arts and the mass media.
His works move within the tradition of institutional criticism and the drifts of pop, through multiple media such as painting, installation, urban intervention and editing.
In its beginnings, it investigates around music and collaborative work and addresses issues such as the space of the city, popular language and the language of the avant-garde.
From 1992, the year of the Seville Expo and the Barcelona Olympics, there was a turning point in his work, and he began to make critical interventions with the system, with topics such as migratory policies, historical memory or speculation. urban.
Throughout his career, he has received scholarships such as the one from the Spanish Academy of Fine Arts in Rome and his work has been recognized with prizes such as El Ojo Critico from RNE or the Francisco de Goya Award from the Madrid City Council.
His work is collected by numerous publications and individual and collective exhibitions, including the retrospective organized by the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Madrid), ‘Going Reading, Giving Place’ in 2019; ‘A quel Paese’ at the Spanish Academy in Rome or ‘The Islands’ at Es Baluard’ (Palma de Mallorca).
His work is part of different collections of national and international institutions, such as the Reina Sofía National Art Center Museum (Madrid); National Library (Madrid); Artium (Vitoria); MUSAC (Leon); Andalusian Center for Contemporary Art; Patio Herreriano Museum (Valladolid); La Caixa Foundation (Barcelona); National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana (Cuba); BESART (Lisbon); Collection Fonds Nationals d’Art Contemporain of Paris (France).
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