20th-21st Century Spanish

Joaquín Rubio Camín was born in 1929 in Gijon. His childhood and youth took place against the backdrop of in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, especially difficult for a modest family with six children. After finishing elementary school, Camín studied mechanics, and at the age of sixteen he entered the practice of the architect Antonio Álvarez Hevia, where he ended up working as a draughtsman. In 1947 he decided to devote himself entirely to art, focusing on painting, and was a totally self-taught artist.

In 1951 he moved to Madrid to take part in the 1st Bienal Hispanoamericana. When the event was over, the artist decided to settle in the Spanish capital, where he would remain for twenty-five years. In that period, Camín frequented Madrid’s art circles and became acquainted with Spain’s leading avant-garde artists, including Jorge Oteiza (1908-2003). In those early years of his career, still dedicated to painting, he entered various competitions and in 1956 he won Spain’s National Painting Award. The need to discover new movements in art encouraged him to settle for a brief period in Paris, thanks to a scholarship from the Spanish Ministry of Culture that same year. Stimulated by a highly inquisitive personality, Camín began to explore new visual terrains, expanding his horizons to the three-dimensions.

In the late-1950s, Camín worked in very different fields: painting, ceramic ornamentation, furniture design and liturgical objects, sculpture and photography. Speaking of photography, he was connected for a while with the Madrid-based photography group .

Something took place in 1960 that would influence his later practice: he was commissioned to create a mural work for Our Lady & St Vincent Church, in Potters Bar, London. From that moment onwards, Camín temporarily quit painting to explore the potentialities of sculpture. And so, after years of research with iron he developed what he called the steel angle, which would become the basic modular element of his sculpture.

In the 1970s, the artist exhibited his work profusely, and in 1975 he returned to Asturias, settling in the natural setting of Valdediós. There he began to work with a new material, wood, thus reflecting the artist’s incipient connection with his surrounding nature.

In 1989 he returned to painting. His works from this new phase are underpinned by a technical innovation: he used acrylic paint, but treating it as he had done with oil in his former paintings, carrying out impastos with a palette knife combined with brushwork. In 2001 the Principality of Asturias awarded him a Silver Medal in recognition of his whole life devoted to art, his great passion.

Works by Joaquín Rubio Camín may be found in collections including Fundación Juan March, Museo de Bellas Artes de Asturias, and Fundación María Cristina Masaveu.