8 essential Spanish artists of the 80s

Spanish art in the 1980s was a period of creative explosion that would set the benchmark throughout the last two decades of the twentieth century and the first decades of the twenty-first century. RedCollectors From the team of RedCollectors we have selected these 8 referential artists of this creative moment, coming from all over Spain and belonging to different generations.

José Manuel Sicilia

José María Sicilia (Madrid, Spain, 1954) is one of the most important artistic figures in Spanish painting in the 1980s. He left his studies at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Madrid to move to Paris in 1980, where he began his artistic career.

Sicilia's work is based on the investigation of form, space and light through pictorial abstraction. It has a recognised expressionist character, as well as a deepening of the monochrome of white. 

During his career, the artist has received the National Prize for Plastic Arts from the Spanish Ministry of Culture in 1989.

The artist's work is represented in museums such as the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid, the MOMA and the Guggenheim Museum in New York. He currently lives between Paris and Sóller, where he has created a foundation dedicated to young artists. In 2015, he was awarded the Gold Medal of Merit in the Fine Arts.

Juan Uslé

Juan Uslé (Santander, Spain, 1954) is one of Spain's leading artists. His work is recognised as one of the most evocative of his generation, with a personal style linked to abstraction.

During the 1980s Uslé's painting evolved from an abstract expressionist style indebted to Willem de Kooning to fascinating, very dark seascapes. These paintings are in a way an account of his solitary arrival in New York and how he establishes his inner identity there.  

His work changed in the 1990s, after two years of residence in the city. The romantic references to landscape and any trace of expressionism disappeared from his work and he developed an extremely personal language of simultaneous styles. 

From this moment on, his works are characterised by their singular intense and non-naturalistic colours, and by the alternation of gesture and geometry, sobriety and baroque, dynamism and immobility, characteristics that can appear alone or together with their opposite, in all possible proportions.

Uslé's work has been presented in numerous solo exhibitions both in Europe and the United States, including the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain; the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland; the Kunstmuseum, Bonn, Germany, among others. His participation in Documenta 9 Kassel (1992), the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005 and his winning of the Premio Nacional de Artes Plásticas in 2002, among others.

Miquel Barceló

Miquel Barceló (Mallorca, Spain, 1957) is a contemporary Spanish painter and sculptor. His work is known for its experimental exploration. It involves elements such as decomposition, light and natural landscape.

His work - neo-expressionist in style - is created from a variety of materials, surfaces and textures. The artist explores matter through a process of constant transformation and metamorphosis. Whether in painting, drawing, ceramics or bronze, his pieces narrate physical behaviour, the passage of time or decomposition.

When creating, Barceló is inspired by a kind of desire, imagination or ritual moved by the interaction with time and memory, the sea and the sky. His pieces are understood as visible traces, offering, in turn, the rupture of artistic conventions. For the artist, to destroy is to create.

His international career began in the early 1980s, when he took part in the São Paulo Biennial (1981) and the Documenta in Kassel (1982). In 1986 he was awarded the Premio Nacional de Artes Plásticas, and since then his work has been recognised by the Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts (2003) and the Sorolla Prize of the Hispanic Society of America in New York (2007). Barceló's work is represented in the most important contemporary art museums in the world. These include MoMA, New York, USA; Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; Guggenheim, Bilbao, Spain; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain; Museo Patio Herreriano, Valladolid, Spain.

Cristina Iglesias

Cristina Iglesias (1956, San Sebastian, Spain) lives and works in Torrelodones, Madrid, Spain.

Cristina Iglesias is considered one of the most innovative artists of recent years on an international level. She has a very defined style in sculpture as well as in photography and screen-printed images. At first glance, the work appears to be a photograph of her sculptural installations, when in fact it represents miniature models of the artist's works. In doing so, Cristina Iglesias aims to explore a space within a space and invite the viewer to enter, seeking a physical and psychological experience. In this way, the work becomes a cul-de-sac into which she incorporates additional narrative information in the form of a network of letters and words.

She has been awarded the Grosse Kunstpreis (Berlin) and her work is present in collections such as those of the Tate Gallery (London), CAPC- Museum of Contemporary Art (Bordeaux), Guggenheim Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (Bilbao), MACBA - Museum of Contemporary Art (Barcelona), among others.

Luis Gordillo

Luis Gordillo (Seville, Spain, 1934) is a renowned Spanish abstract artist. He began his artistic training at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Seville. 

Among the artist's different lines of research, Informalism stands out. His interpretation of Pop Art in the seventies is also outstanding. In his works we can distinguish the importance of series and repetition, as well as the link between thought, experience and expression. Part of his work is related to the tradition of documentary photography and popular cultures linked to graphic design.  

Gordillo's artistic career has been recognised on numerous occasions. In 2012 he was named Favourite Son of Andalusia; in 2008 he was invested Doctor Honoris Causa by the University of Castilla-La Mancha at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Cuenca; in 2007 he was awarded the Velázquez Prize for Plastic Arts, the equivalent in painting of the Cervantes Prize; in 2004 he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid; in 1996 he was awarded the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts by the Ministry of Culture; in 1991 he was awarded the Andalusian Prize for Plastic Arts; in 1981 he received the National Prize for Plastic Arts. His work belongs to important national and international collections.

José Manuel Broto

José Manuel Broto (Zaragoza, 1949) is a Spanish abstract artist. He founded the group Trama (Barcelona, 1976), an innovative and radical political, artistic and literary intervention collective of the Spanish avant-garde of the mid-1970s.

Colour, expression and poetry are common elements in Broto's painting. The artist defends a type of painting that goes beyond the gestural, in opposition to the formalism advocated by American Abstract Expressionism. Contrasts and lyricism are common in his painting, as well as the dialogue between organic and geometric forms.

His work can be found in important collections all over the world. In Spain, these include CAAM (Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno), Las Palmas de Gran Canaria; the Testimonio de La Caixa Collection, Barcelona; the Argentaria Collection, Madrid; the Banco de España Collection, Madrid; among others. And international collections such as the Ateneum Museum, Helsinki; the PREUSSAG Collection, Hannover; the Tore A. Holm Collection, Stockholm; FNAC (Fond National d'Art Contemporain), Paris; Peter Stuyvesant Foundation, Amsterdam; among others.

José María Yturralde

José María Yturralde (Cuenca, Spain, 1942) is a renowned Spanish contemporary artist. The artist holds a degree and PhD in Fine Arts from the Polytechnic University of Valencia; Full Member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Carlos Valencia; Professor of Fine Arts at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Valencia and winner of the National Prize for Plastic Arts 2020.

The artist's work is characterised by abstraction of a technological, geometric and kinetic nature. An approach that is close to op art and minimalism. The artist represents impossible figures, light, precise in colour and simulating movement.

Behind the image lie approaches to art and science. A humanist and mathematical approach, where the human condition is the origin of artistic creation.

The artist's work is present in major national and international public and private collections such as (selection): Fundación Juan March, Palma de Mallorca; Fundación Pilar i Joan Miró, Palma de Mallorca; Generalitat Valenciana; Hasting Foundation, New York; IVAM. Institut Valenciá d'Art Modern, Valencia; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA; Musée de Verck sur Mer, France; Musée Municipel de l'Estampe, Roquebrune - Cap - Martin, France; Museo Ciudad de Valencia, Cortes Valencianas; Museu d'Art Contemporani dels Països Catalans, Banyoles; Museo de Arte Abstracto Español de Cuenca; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Ibiza; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Sevilla; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo do Espiritu Santo de Brasil; Museo de Arte Moderno de Lanzarote; Museo del Alto Aragón, Huesca; Museo de Bellas Artes de Valencia; Museo de Bellas Artes de Vitoria; Museo de la Ciudad de Valencia; Museo Español de Arte Contemporáneo, Madrid; Museo Estatal de Novgorod, Russia; MNCARS - Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Museo Nacional de Wroklaw, Poland; Museo Popular de Arte Contempornáneo de Villafamés, Castellón; Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes de Valencia; Patio Herreriano. Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Español, Valladolid; P. R. Norman Collection, New Orleans; Universidad Complutense de Madrid; Universidad Politécnica de Valencia.

Miguel Angel Campano

Miguel Ángel Campano (Madrid, 1948) is one of the leading figures in the so-called renovation of Spanish painting, which took place in the 1980s and in which Ferrán García Sevilla, José Manuel Broto, José María Sicilia and Miquel Barceló also took part.

The tension between abstraction and figuration and the contrast between empty and full reaches a decisive experimental component in his work. In order to achieve this break with style, Campano revisited the pictorial tradition and took as his starting point certain themes and works of French painting by artists such as Eugène Delacroix, Nicolas Poussin and Paul Cézanne. With them, Campano undertakes the construction of a radicalised aesthetic, where some of the most energetic lines of the minimalist tradition and the gestural variants of Franz Kline and Robert Motherwell converge, together with allusions to the historical avant-gardes linked to Constructivism and Suprematism.

Campano's work - National Prize for Plastic Arts in 1996 - becomes a privileged place of experimentation and transgression, permanently questioning painting from within painting itself. From 1991, the year in which this exhibition begins, this evolution can be seen more clearly.