20^th Century Spanish

Juan Navarro Baldeweg’s practice embraces both Architecture and Painting, and manages to make the two disciplines compatible. Enjoying widespread recognition in Spain and abroad, Navarro Baldeweg has put together a highly consistent and intense body of work.

After studying drawing and painting in Santander from 1951 to 1956 and printmaking at the San Fernando School of Fine Arts from 1959 to 1960, in 1969 he completed a PhD at the ETSA School of Architecture of Madrid. Since 1977, he holds a professorship at the Department of Architecture Projects at ETSA.

Both as a visual artist and as an architect Navarro Baldeweg’s practice reflects on the processes and ways in which man occupies the world. After a brief period of Informalismo, the artist began to experiment with American , a style he picked up in the United States, where he lived from 1971 to 1975. There he started to focus on the study of light, gravity and the balance of elements, and undertook his first experiences during the years when dominated the art world.

Painting became his primary concern in the 1980s, when he began to create his series Vencejos, Kuroi and Dánaes. He is interested in the formulations of post-painterly abstraction, which he combines with the principles of . Navarro Baldeweg lends absolute pride of place to rich and sensuous colour, revealing the influence of both Matisse and Picasso. His most recent works make use of a more aggressive palette and lesser descriptive intent.

Navarro Baldeweg is a member of the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts and of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts. In 1990 he won the National Visual Arts Prize; in 2007 the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts, and a year later, in 2008, the Gold Medal in Architecture, and in 2009 the 10^th Spanish Architecture Biennale Prize.