Miguel Ángel Campano

He studied fine arts in Madrid and Valencia. His first steps in the field of painting (a discipline he has never abandoned and which he has always practiced with absolute dedication) were marked by constructivism and geometric abstraction. His work underwent a significant shift following his move to Paris between 1976 and 1977, in which line, gesture, and matter acquired much greater prominence. Notable is the influence of American abstract expressionism postulates, as well as the literary and avant-garde tradition of French culture. In this sense, it can be affirmed that Campano's work has unfolded as a constant dialogue between individual creative activity and collective historical past.

Various themes of pictorial or literary origin constitute the starting point of the different series in which he has always developed his artistic practice. Cézanne, the landscape of Provence and Poussin, have become almost obsessive references around which he articulated his trajectory during the eighties, his contribution being indispensable and his presence unavoidable in the national artistic panorama.

In the nineties, his painting abandoned the citational game and became radically austere, reducing color to the white/black binomial on white or raw canvas, unprimed. Despite such rigorous economy of means, Campano has achieved results of great richness and visual power. Precisely to this last period belongs the work in our Collection. It is a singular piece that departs from geometric forms—rectangular, circular, trapezoidal, with which he repeatedly organizes pictorial two-dimensional space—and recovers the line. The presence of gesture—contained and free at once—and synthetic figurative references—net and fish—underscore the most relevant aspects, by being differentiating, of this painting.

Text provided by the Mediterranean Foundation. Author: J. B. Peiró.