Àngel Jové: De intactu

The exhibition presents a broad selection of Àngel Jové’s (Lleida, 1940 – Girona, 2023) work, created with some of the main ideas that drove his artistic practice, such as serialism and the infinite gesture, the horizon as a place separating light and dark, emptiness or pain and trauma as consequences of war and exile. In the words of the curator of the project, art historian Maria Josep Balsach, “This exhibition is not intended as an anthological exhibition of one of the most multi-faceted creative talents in Spain, but was approached as a constellation of individual works and different times based on the power of the image seen as a critical operator, as a form of thought, with all its historical aesthetic, political and documentary power.”

The project aims to amplify and make visible Jové’s work, starting from the idea of considering the image beyond the image in order to question the nature, power and limits of visual language. The display at the Museu Tàpies, Barcelona, sets out from these premises: wherever they are standing, the viewers can find an image with a power of its own (symbolic, formal, political, historical or poetic) that invites to think about the power of what is seen, even when it is abstract or contains an emptiness; even when it deals with the trauma caused by the effect of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), postwar and exile, the results of their deep imprint on Jové’s life and work, where modernity and humanity coexist. The project does not therefore close a narrative; it opens it up from the present, expanding on the dilemmas that today remind us constantly of the possibility of returning and the danger of repeating history.

This exhibition presents Àngel Jové’s work on the basis of his own world view: children vulnerable or deformed by an abject childhood, odd characters portrayed as beggars, scenes of loneliness, exposure, hunger or wounds, or the intimacy of the landscape. In this exercise in putting contrasts together, as mentioned by Maria Josep Balsach in her research for the project, the artist’s work also moves through nature, especially dry lands or stony mountains.

Àngel Jové: De intactu explores a visual universe in which memory, melancholy and hurt become knowledge and creation, setting out from the prism of modernity characteristic of his work in the late sixties and early seventies. In his earliest days, Jové was part of Grup Cogul, where he developed a painting style centring on materiality from a distinctly abstract, material perspective. He became a cult actor in Bigas Luna’s films. He was also active in the world of design, as one of the creators of the décor of the legendary Barcelona music venue Zeleste or the book covers of Anagrama editorial.

Jové’s contact with some of the major movements of the sixties enabled him to produce pieces linked to the currents of the time, such as Informalism or Pop Art, though only for a while; these are intensely coloured works, with dense, saturated tones. Jové’s connection with the global counterculture scene enabled him to introduce into Spain new conceptions of action, image, film, photography and video as media with a potential of their own. In this respect, José Luis Corazón points out in his text for the catalogue the relevance of Jové’s stay in London, where he came into contact with the Underground scene, on the basis of which he was able to present “works considered pioneering in these practices seen as opposed both to Formalism and to Pop Art.”

The political and social context is essential to situate Jové in some of the most important manifestations of creative art, radical and politically pioneering in Catalonia and Spain. While he produced a parallel body of work at this time, focusing on experimental cinema and on constant exploration of a range of languages, of particular importance is his relationship with the group of artists known as El Maduixer, a name coined by Alexandre Cirici Pellicer to relate, in a historiographic narrative, Jové with Jordi Galí, Sílvia Gubern, Antoni Llena and Albert Porta (Zush/Evru). Galí, Gubern, Llena and Jové are credited with creating Primera muerte [First Death] (1969–1970), considered the first work of videoart in Spain, filmed at the Col·legi d’Arquitectes de Catalunya, in Barcelona.

The installation approach is essential in displaying drawings that cannot be understood in isolation, but set out from darkness in order to represent light and pain at the same time. In this sense, the visit is structured around a central space conceived as the heart of the exhibition, a core that includes some series of drawings and works from different periods, like the Aby Warburg atlas, through which the artist shifts the notion of finiteness, making it unattainable. 

Made up of drawing of enormous visual power, each series explores a new field of meaning in which the idea of closure dissolves and becomes constant expansion. The last series by Àngel Jové is M’agradaria sortir de casa [I Would Like to Leave Home, 2015–2020), a deep autobiographical reflection. The artist presents a set of large back canvases in square compositions that develop an iconography consolidated in the course of his career. These works set out the thematic lines of the exhibition and the curator’s narrative: the artist’s childhood and the places associated with it, everyday life, humility and mental landscapes. Maria Josep Balsach points out that this is a summary of his inner journey, “where everything has lost its immediate meaning. It is pure, timeless painting, that suspends us in its eternal fragility.”