20th-21st Century Spanish

Marta Cárdenas began her training at the San Fernando School of Fine Arts in Madrid in the 1960s and in 1969 she obtained a scholarship from the French Government to further her studies in Paris.

During those formative years, Cárdenas familiarised herself with the works of the artists in the , and , primarily thanks to her assiduous visits to the newly opened Galería Juana Mordó in Madrid. These inputs were fleshed out by influences from Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964), Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), Claude Monet (1840-1926) and Oriental calligraphy.

Her early works consist largely of paintings of interiors and self-portraits defined by a sense of stillness, silence and austerity in shadowy scenes dominated by a subdued palette of colours. The artist had her first solo exhibition in 1970, held in her hometown of San Sebastian, followed in 1974 by another solo show in Madrid.

The 1970s saw an evident shift in her work, now focusing more on outdoors scenes, inspired by her liking of Monet and of Abstract Impressionism. The result was a deeply lyrical body of work in which the final expression of what we see is colour and the effects of light. The paintings in the BBVA Collection belong to this period.

Critical in the development of her career was a journey to India in 1996, where she was absolutely enthralled by its colour and became conscious of the Euro-centrism prevailing in our culture and in our art practice, encouraging her to set out on an exploration of other cultures. Before materializing her research in physical work, Cárdenas first pores over the images filling her notebooks, examining them in great detail. Throughout her whole career, she has combined an observation of the external world and plein air painting with an exhaustive theoretical study of the subject matters she deals with.

In 2016, Sala Kubo-Kutxa in San Sebastian organised a retrospective exhibition curated by Alfonso de la Torre, surveying her trajectory to date. Works by Marta Cárdenas can be found in institutions like Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao; Artium, Vitoria; Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid; and Fundación Juan March.