RAFAEL CANOGAR — Construcciones 1968–1975. A.R.C. 2, Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1975

A.R.C. 2, Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, 11 avenue du Président-Wilson, 75116 Paris, 6 May–15 June 1975. Vernissage 6 May 1975. Original exhibition invitation. Monochrome offset print on card stock, 11.5 × 16 cm. Photographic reproduction and exhibition information to recto; blank verso.

Condition: Very good. Light age toning, minor surface and edge wear, and faint corner softening.

A founding member of El Paso, Canogar moved during the 1960s from gestural abstraction towards politically charged figures constructed in wood, polyester and reinforced fibreglass. Bodies no longer remained within the picture plane but projected into the viewer’s space, carrying the pressures of protest, detention and collective violence under Franco’s Spain.

The Paris exhibition gathered these constructions from 1968 to 1975. Its accompanying catalogue included texts by Antonio García-Tizón, Vicente Aguilera Cerni and José María Ballester; the exhibition later travelled to Lund, Høvikodden and the Louisiana Museum in Denmark.

A restrained figure is fixed against two broad black strokes, the body partially covered and held within a rectangular support. An object originally made to break through the surface is returned here to photographic flatness and sent back into circulation as an announcement.

Ships flat, securely backed and tracked from the UK.