Clara Gangutia

San Sebastián, 1952.

A painter and engraver, she commenced (but did not complete) her studies in 1968, at the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts, where one of her maestros was Antonio López, who so influenced the definition of her style and the choice of themes, such as Madrid cityscapes. A scholarship from the Foreign Affairs Ministry enabled her to continue her training at Rome’s Fine Arts Academy in 1974, which she used to travel around Italy and discover Venetian painting, which she admired deeply. She later furthered her knowledge with scholarships from the Juan March Foundation (1977) and the Culture Ministry (1979).

Her work is crudely and overwhelmingly realist, and in it the most day-to-day object acquires unexpected characteristics, to the point where there is even a nuance of surrealism - but not as a romantic evocation, but as a method of cold analysis. It is autobiographical in style, developed around her own life: her family, her friends, the cities and landscapes in which she lived, those she has travelled through with enough time to establish a fertile visual dialogue or those with which she has affectionate ties.

Her first participation in an exhibition was at the I Concurso Nacional para Artistas Jóvenes “Blanco y Negro”, held in 1970. One year later she participated in the exhibition “Jóvenes realistas” at Madrid’s Seiquer gallery, having always been associated with the realist movement. Her individual exhibitions and participation in collective shows have allowed her work to be seen in cities like Madrid, Bilbao, San Sebastián, Milan, Montreal, Glasgow and Berlin,…. As well as having works included in the permanent collections of major museums such as Madrid’s Reina Sofía or Bilbao’s Fine Arts Museum, her paintings were also included in collections such as that of the UEE, for which she immortalised a corner of the “Galdácano” factory in 1998.

The quest for extreme light and shadow is a constant in her work, especially in recent years, when detail, the nuance of mid-tones, has gained importance. She became increasingly interested in the concepts of grandeur and monumentality, the vertical and the vast, what it is that lends meaning to the set of elements that appear in her paintings.

Painter Juan Antonio Tinte said of her that " ...she is well acquainted with reality, its size, she knows that with each step the horizon wanes in the same way that a wise man or scientist knows that it is impossible to bring together all knowledge in a single order of discipline. That is why, for her, reality has those two aspects which shape the career of an artist who is committed to painting: containment in the discipline she is working in, on the one hand, and a limited artistic proposal on the other, in a language which brings us closer in the best possible way to the reality we occupy as seen by someone other than ourselves".

1998 Clara Cangutia Galdácano Oleo/lienzo 50 x 64 cm.