Sponsored by Milan Instituto Cervantes
The exhibition has been mounted in association with Frankfurter Kunstverein and COPEC, Barcelona.

With Sentimiento de paisaje, the Catalan painter Hernandez Pijuan exhibits the works he realised between 1977 and 1997, approximately forty big and middle-sized pictures.

The works belong to private collections of various European countries and to Spanish museums. The artist planned the exhibition together with Elvira Maluquer, who had already attended to Pijuan retrospective exhibition, mounted by the Museo National Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, in 1993.

Elvira Maluquer is attending to the exhibition and an international catalogue with critical texts by Maria de Corral, P. Weiermair, the critic K. Honnef and V. Roma, "El Pais" critic, integrates it.

After the Stelline Refectory, in Italy, Germany will host the exhibition, at the Frankfurter Kunstverein and at the Konsthall, in Malmo.

The painter was born in Barcelona in 1931 and made his debuts in the '50s. He began with an expressionist style. After travelling to Paris in 1957, he turned to an informal style, inspired by Franz Kleine's instinctive paintings. His lively space seems to be Pijuan's main point of reference, but the Mediterranean and oriental culture, the French Impressionism (especially Manet) and Braque's flat sign influenced Pijuan's style, as well. Pijuan used black as a colour and space was his painting's uncontested protagonist. His painting was free, lyric, and so emotional that the subject disappeared.

   Interior trasparent,1985
Subsequently, he decided to recover forms, experiences and objects. He wanted to work with the objects of his everyday life. His painting is rarefied and nearly metaphysical. Someone compared it to Mondriani's works. His slow, monochromatic, very meditative painting makes the artist reconsider empty spaces and forms.

In the '70s, Pijuan realises empty spaces and forms in his frontal, monochromatic landscapes where physical space and intimate, emotional space mix. New rhythms, new tensions and a new observation and copy of the landscape are born.

Pijuan's slow and patient work is not only the result of a mental speculation but also the result of personal experience and feelings. As time goes by, landscapes acquire impressionist, atmospheric values returning, in other times and with different targets, to colour touches. In the'80s, as instinct seemed to prevail, the artist returned to drawings and to using black and white. Since the '50s, his exhibitions have been hosted in European and international galleries: in Paris, Zurich, Johannesburg, Cologne, Washington, New York and Osaka.

Maria De Corral illustrated Pijuan's painting intention in her introduction to the catalogue of the 1993 exhibition: "…he broke the rigid and obsolete distinction between abstraction and images. His painting was always on the oscillating borderline of body and mind."

To Pijuan, painting means transforming matter, stirring up emotions through rigorous and unadorned materials, creating very sensuous images.

Mezzi pubblici per raggiungere la Galleria:
MM Cadorna, tram 24 e 19, autobus 94

For further information:
Credito Valtellinese Group Gallery "Stelline Refectory",
Monday to Friday from 9.30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Telefax 02.48008015 - phone 4814269.

Organization and press office:
Kriterion srl,
Via Motta 6 - 20144 Milan phone 02.43980453 - Fax 02.43980455;
in association with Irma Bianchi Comunicazione, via Arena 16/1 - 20123 Milan
Phone 02.8940694 - Fax 02.8356467

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