Until June 2, the Antonio Pérez Foundation in Cuenca (Spain) is hosting ‘Paisajes sin tiempo’, an exhibition by Calo Carratalá featuring almost 200 works about the artist’s travels in Tanzania and Senegal.
Manyara Lake No. 4. Acrylic on printed vinyl canvas, 2022
Todo avanza hacia su final V. Oil on canvas, 2021.
Left: sketchbook. Right: Baobab series.
Six years and almost 6,000 kilometres separate Calo Carratalá‘s two trips to Africa, the first to Tanzania in 2017 and the second to Senegal in 2023. The 200 works on display in the ‘Paisajes sin tiempo’ exhibition bear witness to the Spanish painter’s immersive exploration of the continent’s landscapes. Travel diaries, drawings, large-scale paintings… Some of these works were produced during his travels, others much later, in the familiar setting of his studio near Valencia.
This production, which invests different media and techniques depending on the time and place of creation, illustrates the way in which the artist works on each of his projects: “During my trips, which last about a month, I go out with my notebook, my watercolours, my pencils, my A4 sketchbook, I take notes and, at the same time, I take photos of everything I draw. Once the trip is over, I keep the material for several months until I start working with it again. They are memories of spaces that I have seen, spaces that I have experienced and that I then recreate”.
The exhibition in this former Carmelite convent is structured by the passage from one technique to another, from one motif to another. As they make their way through the rooms, visitors pass from a painting measuring six metres by two metres to another measuring 20 centimetres by 30 centimetres, from a drawing on cardboard where black predominates to an oil on canvas all in shades of blue.
Paisajes sin tiempo | Antonio Pérez Foundation, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo, Cuenca, Spain. Exhibition view.
Paisajes sin tiempo | Antonio Pérez Foundation, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo, Cuenca, Spain. Exhibition view.
Paisajes sin tiempo | Antonio Pérez Foundation, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo, Cuenca, Spain. Exhibition view.
The artist explains that “Every journey has a colour”. As Francesc Xavier Llopis Bauset, who wrote the preface to the exhibition catalogue, notes: “Before Africa, his palette of colours travelled as far as the Amazon jungle. It was there that he began to capture on canvas the dense greens that contrasted with the whites he had previously explored in snowy landscapes, both in the Pyrenees and the Alps and in the northern regions of Norway.”
Calo Carratalá’s work can be read as a journey through the landscape that began in his immediate surroundings, near his home town of Torrent, and then moved on to explore other continents. In keeping with the landscape tradition, the artist shows us seemingly untouched spaces, far from the hustle and bustle of tourism or urban life. His human figures often have an anecdotal presence. They give scale to the landscapes they inhabit: fragile silhouettes confronted by the power of a nature that seems ready to engulf them.
Paisajes sin tiempo | Antonio Pérez Foundation, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo, Cuenca, Spain. Exhibition view.
Paisajes sin tiempo | Antonio Pérez Foundation, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo, Cuenca, Spain. Exhibition view.
Paisajes sin tiempo | Calo Carratalá
Until June 2, 2024
Antonio Pérez Foundation | Centro de Arte Contemporáneo | Cuenca, Spain
About the artist:
Calo Carratalá (1959) studied at the San Carlos Faculty of Fine Arts in Valencia and has been awarded grants from the Spanish Academy in Rome (2000-2001) and Kunstnarhuset Messe in Norway (2011). His work can be found in major Spanish institutional collections, such as the Fundación Cultural Mafre Vida in Madrid, the Fundación Bancaixa in Valencia and the Academia de España in Rome, as well as in numerous private collections.
