Canogar is one of the most recognized contemporary Spanish painters and engravers, and his works can be admired in important museums throughout the world.

After spending his childhood in San Sebastián, in 1944 he moved to Madrid with his family. Four years later the painter Vázquez Díaz accepted him as a disciple, and at the same time he drew at the Círculo de Bellas Artes. During this period he painted landscapes and portraits in the style of his master and began to take an interest in the work of Braque, Picasso and Miró.

In the mid-1950s, his painting evolved towards informal abstraction with strong expressive charge. That year he met critic M. Conde with whom he traveled to Paris and Italy.

In 1957, together with Manuel Millares, Antonio Saura, Luis Feito, Manuel Rivera, Pablo Serrano, Juana Francés and Antonio Suárez, he participated in the founding of the group El Paso. In 1960 he participated in the exhibition of New Spanish Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York together with exponents of the young avant-gardes.

The painting of this period is characterized by very gestural works in ochre, gray, white and black tones. It is then when the Characters series begins with a timid intention of social criticism. From the 1960s onwards, he introduces fragments of photographs from reports in his works and gradually the forms become more concrete in objects, faces and figures.

In 1964 he definitively abandoned informalism and began a period based on the narrative chronicle of reality, inspired by the media, with clear political criticism through images of riots and repression. Subsequently these images acquired a third dimension and the colors were reduced to a range of grays and blacks.

From 1975 onwards he returned to abstraction, to which he incorporated formal elements from the cubist tradition to move shortly after to monochromatic paintings elaborated with interwoven brushstrokes. Since the early 1980s he has focused his interest on the theme of still lifes, the heads of Julio González and urban scenes, combining color planes and schematic figures.

In 1971 he obtained the Grand Prize of the São Paulo Biennial and in 1982 the National Prize for Plastic Arts.

Text provided by the Fundación Mediterráneo. Author: J.B. Peiró.