- Dates
- —
- Curated by
- Miguel Cervantes
Amat: Four Background Landscapes (1975-1992)
If there is a characteristic way of being or state for Frederic Amat, it is adventure. He frequents it like a primordial need during his working hours. Imagination for him is – and can only be – an adventurous journey, penetrating the uncharted until the moment of revelation. The remarkable diversity of his works can be explained by this adventure, reinitiated at every step.
Frederic Amat’s work belongs to the modern lineage of artists that produced Schwitters, Cornell and Rauschenberg, and whose closest figures are Klee, Miró and Tàpies, in whose work there is a proliferation of a variety of materials that embody the brilliance of authentic painting. Amat recovers both the most noble and most risible materials and transforms them into sublime matter: into painting.
One of the sources of his creation is, of course, his travels. He is a travelling artist. The works in this exhibition are therefore structured around four cities where Amat lived at various times in his life and which left their mark on his work: Ceuta (1975), Oaxaca (1977-1979), New York (1979-1987) and Barcelona. Amat’s art underwent a transformation in each of these places. Oaxaca’s textiles, clothing and ceremonial instruments became symbolic prosceniums in New York. Objects of daily use, remnants of a lost concept of culture in which art and life were integrated, transformed into hermetic spaces, partially obscured by semi-transparent curtains. Back in Barcelona, his language concentrated on increasingly synthetic forms, without losing the baroque spillover that had always characterised his work.
Co-organised by the Catalan Government, the Museo Rufino Tamayo in Mexico, the Instituto de América in Santa Fe (Granada) and the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona, the exhibition presents an overview of Frederic Amat’s production through one hundred and twenty-two works from 1975 to 1992. Despite its anthological nature, the exhibition does not fall into the trap of a retrospective. The works selected by the exhibition’s curator, Miguel Cervantes, tell us above all about the artist’s interests and concerns, while at the same time inviting us to participate in the wide range of ideas that can be gleaned from them.
Given that this is the first time that Amat’s work has been comprehensively shown in Spain, it is not only a journey through his creative activity, but also a homecoming.
