Juana Francés. Up to the Sky, from the Bottom of the Sea
11.07.2018
Organizes: Museum of Contemporary Art of Alicante and Department of Culture
Collaborates: Provincial Council of Alicante
Juana Francés
(Alicante, 1923 - Madrid, 1990) is one of the most forceful artists in the trajectory of Spanish visual art of the twentieth century; founding member and the only woman of the El Paso group, she was always a creator of strong character and extreme sensitivity not always recognized.
We present works from the "Juana Francés Collection", a legacy of the artist to this Museum. It is composed of more than one hundred works including drawings, paintings, boxes, towers, silkscreens and lithographs that span all her creative stages: from the first figurative works to the dazzling informalist pieces that gave way to her most radical works: the "boxes", where she reflects on the dehumanization of man. The search for harmony and balance, through the use of color, is materialized in the subtle papers of underwater backgrounds, to take up again, at the end of her life, gesture and matter.
Juana Francés de la Campa (Alicante, 1924 – Madrid, 1990) is one of the most powerful artists in the Spanish art scene of the second half of the twentieth century. There were very few women in the avant-garde front line, but she was always there, with her own personality, attentive to the artistic concerns of a generation of artists who revolutionized art, driven by a coercive political, social and cultural situation.Juana's painting emanates a persistent murmur: a profound unease, an anguish that surfaces in all her works. Whether through subject matter, composition, gesture, material or color, Juana Francés' painting is wrapped in an unbreathable atmosphere. They are hard, complex, committed and suffocating works… but of great pictorial quality that stood out then in the most important biennials and international exhibitions of contemporary Spanish art. Juana enjoyed national and international recognition. Art history has forgotten her since. And it is necessary to recover her.Juana Francés performed an act of generosity toward the city of Alicante in 1990. Upon her death, she donated her collection to the museums of four Spanish cities: Zaragoza, Madrid, Valencia and Alicante. Thus it was, and today, the Juana Francés Legacy belongs to the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Alicante for the enjoyment of all.
