Joan Hernández Pijuan

Joan Hernández Pijuan - Tija

Technique: Gouache on paper

Artist Biography: Joan Hernández Pijuan, born in Barcelona in 1931 and died in the same city in 2005, was a prominent Spanish artist who studied at the Escola d'Arts i Oficis de la Llotja and the Escola de Belles Arts in Barcelona before moving to Paris in 1957 to study Print and lithography at the École de Beaux-Arts. While he began close to gestural expressionism, he soon adopted geometric figuration, which included fields of color and solitary objects such as fruits, cups, eggs or scissors. Color was always one of the most important elements in his work, treated with great elegance and mysticism.In the eighties, Hernández Pijuan added forms such as the profile of a cypress tree, the furrows of a plow or the silhouette of a leaf, without ever abandoning abstraction. At the end of that decade, he returned to informalism and developed a painting characterized by the exclusive use of a black and white palette. With an atmospheric and austere work, he transformed painting into an exercise of spirituality and inner contemplation. He also stood out as an engraver, with a careful work of the weft and the serial element, also monochromatic.Since his first solo exhibition at the Museu de Mataró in 1955, Hernández Pijuan exhibited in art spaces in Spain and abroad. Among the retrospectives dedicated to the artist, highlights include those at the Centre Cultural Tecla Sala in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat (1992), the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid (1993), the MACBA in Barcelona (2003) and the Museum of Modern Art in Moscow (2011). His work can be found in collections such as the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the National Gallery in Montreal, the Museo de Arte Moderno in Buenos Aires, the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid and the MACBA in Barcelona.