Joaquín Rubio Camín

(Gijon, 1929 - 2007)

Industria

1981

steel

215 x 198 x 28.5 cm

Inv. no. 39223

BBVA Collection Spain



Joaquín Rubio Camín was a multidisciplinary artist whose passion for art and creation in general led him to experiment in the fields of painting, photography, graphic art and very specially sculpture, a medium in which he stood out for his development of a modular compositional element known as the steel angle.

In 1947, Camín decided to quit his job as a draughtsman in an architecture practice in order to devote himself full-time to painting. His early works were landscapes and representations of settings from his native Asturias, but through an avant-garde lens far removed from the academicist canons prevailing in official circles.

María Soledad Álvarez, Professor of the Department of Art History and Musicology at the Oviedo University, has established three distinct phases in Camín’s trajectory concerning the treatment and development of this modular principle. The genesis of the steel angle dates to between 1962 and 1964. This period, which he calls his baroque phase, was largely a time of research into the possibilities offered by the new formulation. The works from this phase consist in angular compositions with a predominance of the horizontal axis. From 1964 to 1968 his compositions became simpler and the number of angles per piece was reduced. Apart from the reduction in number, there was also a change in the way of performing the cuts and torsions of the material. The third phase, known as the classical period, ranged from 1968 to 1990. This was when Camín experimented with large-format pieces, like Industria, the work in hand from the BBVA Collection.

This work, in which Camín creates tensions between straight and curved shapes, showcases the multiple possibilities of the angle, here developed in all directions. As the work clearly demonstrates, the steel gives the sculpture powerful robustness, balanced by the formal simplicity of the angle.

Industria was conceived and created for the offices of the no-longer existing Indubán bank. It later moved into the hands of Banco de Comercio before finally ending up in the BBVA Collection. Currently the two (circular and vertical) bodies of the sculpture are joined by nails, although initially there was a sheet of glass between the two elements, instilling it with a different compositional and visual rhythm.

Camín’s sculpture mirrors the visual concerns in Spanish art during the second half of the twentieth century. On one hand, we can see the incorporation of industrial materials and elements (as had already been the case with the work of two of Camín’s main influences: Julio González and Jorge Oteiza (1908-2003); and, on the other, the development of a technique that divested sculpture of all superfluous elements, creating a work of great purity and visual and formal power.