Entering the universe of Miguel Ángel Campano (Madrid, 1948 – Cercedilla, Madrid, 2018) means to approach a multiplicity of references, influences and styles. The project “Accents and difference” is a review of those moments that have been crucial in his career. Moments of change and rupture, also of confession.
The show is also a rereading of the exhibition “D’après“ that was presented at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in 2019. The retrospective in Madrid, in which Campano actively participated before dying, encourages reflection on how some artists have been a cornerstone in his career, from Poussin, Delacroix, Guerrero or Gris, to Rimbaud’s writing. He is not so much looking for a direct legacy, but rather invites us to stop and think about what it has meant in his painting to have approached them. How Campano has sifted such diverse views and managed to create his own style ‘following from’.
In Palma, we follow the trail ‘following from’ but accentuating crucial moments of change and difference. We can say that we find works that allow us to revisit and understand his work based on a reflection about some of the moments in which the artist was conscious of entering a new pictorial investigation. The exhibition allows us to visit artworks from the first period, of geometric influence, close to the Grupo de Cuenca, as well as others in which gestural language permeates the entire surface. Vital moments in which his travels are present from mythological traces and series in which he only uses black oil. Step by step, we are approaching those moments in which Campano reinvents Campano, breaking with references, styles and trends. Approaching, above all, an idea of painting understood as epistemology.
Exhibition organized by Es Baluard Museu d’Art Contemporani de Palma in collaboration with the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, from the exhibition “Miguel Ángel Campano. D’après”.