JUAN BARJOLA (Torre de Miguel Sesmero, Badajoz, 1919 - Madrid, 2004)."Qué ha pasado, 1964.Oil on canvas.Work reproduced in the catalogue raisonné of the artist.The frame is damaged.Signed and dated.Measurements: 130 x 164 cm; 150 x 176 cm (frame).Belonging to the current of representational expressionism, Juan Barjola is one of the most outstanding Spanish painters of the second half of the 20th century. His love of drawing was already evident when he was a child. At the age of fifteen he arrived in Badajoz to begin his training at the city's School of Arts and Crafts. In 1943 he moved to Madrid, where he first studied at the School of Arts and Crafts and later at the San Fernando School of Fine Arts. At the same time, he furthered his training at the Prado Museum. During this period, which ended in 1950, Barjola produced a series of academic works of a naturalistic style, with themes taken from family life, suburban characters and other genre scenes. Towards 1950 he began a new post-cubist phase, the prevailing trend in Madrid at the time, due to the influence of Daniel Vázquez Díaz. During these years Barjola would develop faceted images, with a flat treatment and cold, bluish colours. At the same time he began to develop a new, more constructive phase, marked by earthy colours. In 1957 Barjola made his debut at the Abril gallery in Madrid, and that same year he held two more solo exhibitions in Brussels. He then embarked on a brilliant exhibition career that took his work to Europe, Japan, the United States and Latin America. Around 1958 he began a short but intense period in which he experimented with an abstract language. His work was now marked by thick, sumptuous impastos of sordid, dark colours, which made up abstract, organic still lifes. This was the heyday of the material abstraction led by Tàpies from Barcelona. A year later, without the thick impasto disappearing, the organic stains began to be resolved into human embryos, the result being a return to figuration in line with the international trend initiated by Francis Bacon. Barjola thus became the main Spanish representative of the New Figuration. At the same time, his work became increasingly recognised. Around 1964 his work underwent a new evolution, marked by the paintings of Velázquez, Goya and El Greco. This marked the beginning of the painter's Golden Age. The thick impasto disappeared and his language became more fluid, while his colours became brighter and more luminous. At the same time, Barjola created a series of works of brutal expressionism and great visual power, linked to the themes of violence and war. However, around 1972 his painting began to leave behind this conceptual weight and opened up to a more purely plastic experimentation, in which form, composition and colour became the protagonists. This change led, in the eighties, to a painting marked by a decorative sense and a lighter, more optimistic lyricism. All the drama of his work disappears, and his paintings become celebrations of light, colour and movement. It was at this time that he was awarded the Premio Nacional de Artes Plásticas (1985). In the following decade, however, Barjola returned to dramatic expression, abandoning formal experimentation to focus on an implacable pessimism, directing his painting towards what had always been his artistic credo: the expression of human drama. After his death in 2004, important exhibitions have been devoted to him, such as the retrospective held at the IVAM in Valencia in 2006. He is currently represented in the Museum that bears his name in Oviedo, the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid, the Fine Arts Museums of Bilbao and Asturias, the IVAM in Valencia, the Solidarity Museum in Chile, the Camón Aznar Museum in Zaragoza and the Contemporary Art Museum in Vilafamés, etc.