Escena urbana (Urban Scene)

Rafael Canogar was a founding member of the group El Paso and a key figure in the renewal of post-war Spanish painting. Initially linked to informalism and material abstraction, in the late 1960s he made a decisive shift towards figuration, first influenced by British pop art and later with a committed political approach. After Franco’s death he returned to abstraction, which he continues up to the present day, with an essentialist style of painting, close to minimalism.

Escena urbana is part of this figurative stage, in which Canogar denounces systemic violence and the silence imposed by the dictatorship. He uses press photography techniques, the anonymous crowd and expressiveness of black and white, to articulate a direct, raw iconography that represents the anguish of collective drama. This work reaffirms his commitment to history and the present, using art as a vehicle for awareness and memory.

Raúl Martínez Arranz