ArtistSpanish
Josep Guinovart
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Josep Guinovart i Bertran was born on 20 March 1927 in Barcelona into a working-class family, and his first contact with the art world came through his father's house-painting trade. He began formal studies at the Escola de Belles Arts and the Escola d'Arts i Oficis in Barcelona, held his first solo exhibition in 1948, and by 1951 had committed fully to painting. These early years unfolded against the backdrop of Francoist Spain, where cultural expression was tightly constrained, a condition that gave particular urgency to the avant-garde networks taking shape in Catalonia.
A scholarship-funded stay in Paris from 1952 to 1953 proved transformative. Guinovart encountered the international currents of abstraction and matter painting first-hand, and his work began moving decisively away from figuration. Back in Barcelona in 1955, he co-founded the Grup Taüll with Antoni Tapies, Modest Cuixart, Joan-Josep Tharrats, Marc Aleu, Jaume Mercade, and Jaume Muxart - a short-lived but significant collective that pushed Catalan art toward the European avant-garde. He also became associated with the broader Escola de Barcelona, which emerged as a focal point for artistic renewal in the following decade.
By the late 1950s, Guinovart had made a full commitment to what critics would identify as informalism - a European strain of abstract expressionism that emphasized material texture and painterly gesture over compositional structure. His canvases began incorporating cardboard, burned wood, oil drums, wire, and discarded objects, creating layered surfaces that occupied the boundary between painting and sculpture. Color, often applied in dense, contrasting passages of ochre, black, and deep red, remained central even as the physical weight of embedded matter accumulated. Works from this period, such as the lithographic series 'La por del poeta' (1971), show his sustained interest in combining print with manual intervention to produce unique results from editioned matrices.
Recognition arrived through multiple channels. The City of Barcelona Prize came in 1981, the Spanish National Prize for Plastic Arts in 1982, the Creu de Sant Jordi from the Generalitat de Catalunya in 1983, and in 1993 he was named an Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government. A dedicated museum space, the Espai Guinovart, opened in Agramunt in 1994 - his mother's hometown, which he had fled as a child during the Civil War bombardments of 1937. The museum's permanent installation includes the large mural 'Les quatre estacions' and two site-specific pieces, 'La cabana' and 'L'era', rooting his late work in the agricultural landscape of the Urgell comarca. He died in Sitges on 12 December 2007.
On Auctionist, 13 works by Guinovart appear in the database, circulating primarily through Spanish auction houses, with Balclis accounting for the largest share followed by Barcelona Auctions and Arce Auctions. The material includes paintings, compositions on paper, etchings, and hand-colored carborundum prints. His lithographic series 'La por del poeta' (1971) has appeared multiple times, reflecting collector interest in his editioned works. Recorded sale prices in the database range from approximately 1,000 to 1,600 SEK, consistent with the lower end of his print and works-on-paper market; his paintings and large mixed-media canvases have achieved up to approximately $19,000 USD at international auction.