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Joaquim Chancho

Since its beginnings in the 1970s, the work of Joaquim Chancho has been characterized by an austere reductionist geometry and an intense dialogue between gesture, painting and the matrix.  The expressive essence of the work emerges through rhythm and repetition, and is, depending on the complexity of the image, complemented by an internal system of fusions, fragments and interruptions that give a sense of serenity and depth, allowing the viewer to participate, like a voyeur, in the creative process.  As Assumpta Rosés observed in her catalogue essay, the work represents a “shock between the gesture of the painter and the canvas, a resistance of materials to the action, a tension between the space that contains it and the sign that emerges from the gesture.  Support, materials, action and rhythm lead to a primordial geometry, to the construction of surfaces, the creation of surfaces, signs and spatial orders such as can be found in life and work: I think of the patterns formed by fields and roads, in the structures of stone or brick walls, the interweaving of writing, the modulation of textiles, the accumulations of industrial materials or the labyrinthine traces of routes taken.”

Belonging to a generation of artists whose work is based on the assumption that the only significant elements in painting are its own technique and its application to the support, Chancho has enjoyed, for more than thirty years, a long and distinguished career.  For years he has worked as professor at the Fine Arts School of the University of Barcelona, where he earned his doctorate in 1992, and has exhibited internationally in galleries and museums, with exhibitions at La Fundación Joan Miró, el Centre d’Art Santa Mónica, el Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Ibiza, el Museo de Arte de Tarragona, el Museo Rufino Tamayo, México, and this year, a major retrospective at the Sala Tecla in Hospitalet de Llobregat (Barcelona).  Chancho is the recipient of numerous and prestigious prizes for painting and drawing, including a grant from the Fundación Juan March of Madrid and First Prize for painting at the Bienal of Tarragona en 1987.  His work can be found in the permanent collections of many important institutions, such as the Fundación La Caixa, the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo of Barcelona and the Generalitat de Catalunya among others.