Sin título (El elefante) (Untitled [The Elephant])

In the mid-1970s, when contemporaneity was associated with conceptual and performative practices, a group of artists based in Madrid decided to reclaim painting as a provocative act. Among its protagonists, Rafael Pérez-Mínguez occupies a unique place. His brief career began in the visual laboratory of the magazine Nueva Lente alongside his cousins, photographers Luis and Pablo Pérez-Mínguez. As a painter, he held two decisive solo shows, at Amadís Gallery (1971) and Buades Gallery (1974), before retiring from painting shortly afterwards. In this latest exhibition, he presented his work El elefante, painted in a style that oscillates between the aesthetics of the Quattrocento and those of Giorgio de Chirico, displaying a hybrid imaginary featuring legendary figures, symbolic animals and decorative exuberance, all inserted into a scene that seems to be taken from an archaeological dream. The painting not only vindicates the value of narrative and ornamentation, but also challenges the prevailing minimalist, conceptual rationale, proposing a vision in which the narrative and the visual regain their centrality.

Raúl Martínez Arranz