RAFAEL CANOGAR (Toledo, 1935)."Manipulo", 1961.Oil on canvas.Work reproduced in the artist's catalogue raisonné Nº 1961-001, and on the artist's website.Signed in the lower right corner.Size: 60 x 73 cm; 84 x 96 cm (frame).Based on an image of binary tonality, where abstraction becomes aware of the compositional space, Canogar confronts black and white, light and darkness, generating an open debate towards socio-cultural concepts. In this piece, where the artist's hand "manipulates colour" with a spatula, Canogar presents that pictorial deixis that resides in the gesture and the trace, which define a specific moment in his artistic production. A work that comes into contact with currents such as existentialism, and with the political situation of a Spain still under dictatorship.Rafael Canogar trained with the painter Daniel Vázquez Díaz between 1949 and 1954. During these years he worked along the lines of the avant-garde, soon moving towards abstraction. Co-founder of the group "El Paso" in 1957, during the fifties he developed a fully informalist work, which in the sixties became increasingly more narrative and complex figuration. From the 1960s onwards he achieved international recognition as a visiting professor at Milles College in California to teach the art course 1965-66, and as a guest artist at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles in 1969. Between 1972 and 1974 he was also invited by the D.A.A.D. in Berlin as an artist in residence. During his mature period, from 1975 onwards, Canogar invented a new iconography, his own and personal, which he expressed through the mask, the head, the face, as a representation of man who loses his individuality and becomes a plastic sign. His work was also recognised in Spain, and during the 1980s he was a member of the Advisory Council of the General Directorate of Fine Arts of the Ministry of Culture, of the Board of Trustees of the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Madrid, and a member of the Board of Directors of the National Heritage. Throughout his career, Canogar has held countless solo and group exhibitions. Among the personal exhibitions, several have been retrospectives, including: Museo Nacional de Arte Contemporáneo and Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Villa de Paris, Sonia Heine Foundation in Oslo, Konsthalle de Lund in Sweden, Paris Art Center, Bochum Art Museum in Germany, Istituto di Storia dell'Arte de Parma, Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, Fundación Casa del Cordón de Burgos, Museo de Santa Cruz de Toledo, Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid, etc. Canogar has given workshops and lectures in several European and American countries, and has participated in juries of international prizes and biennials. He has also been awarded various prizes and distinctions, including the Grand Prize at the São Paulo Biennial (1971), the Grand Prize at the Sofia International Painting Triennial (1982), the National Prize for the Plastic Arts in Madrid (1982), etc. He has also been named Chevalier de l'Ordre des Artes et Lettres of France, has received the Encomienda de la Orden de Isabel la Católica, is a numerary member of the Academia de San Fernando and Doctor Honoris Causa by the U.N.E.D. Canogar is currently represented in the most important modern art collections around the world, such as the Museo Reina Sofía, the MoMA in New York, the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, the Museo Rufino Tamayo in Mexico and the Chicago Art Institute, among many others.