Juan Genovés (b. 1930)

Against a dusty rose ground, a crowd coalesces and swells into a crested wave in Juan Genovés’ Fases (Phases). Evincing a wholly cinematic viewpoint inspired, in part, by the films of his childhood, the painting presents an aerial view of a featureless land; this is terra incognita and the reason for such an assembly of these colourfully impasto figures remains unclear. For Genovés, crowds are the enduring theme of his extensive oeuvre, evoking his earliest memories of the Spanish Civil War. He believes strongly that art must have a social and political consciousness, which he feels his tiny figures embody: they are fleeing, he explained, ‘to any place where there is a bit of harmony, where there is a sense of justice’ (J. Genovés interviewed by M. Vincent, ‘The Latest Undertaking of Juan Genovés’, Genovés, exh. cat., IVAM Centre Julio González, Madrid, 1992, unpaged). Indeed, Fases is a meditation on the individual within the mass, and the responsibility of both.