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Martillo, 1977

Hammer, 1977
Painting, 100 x 71.5 cm

‘To be born a painter, start to DRAW, then paint on CARD, and then have the nerve to paint on CANVAS, painting-painting the immediate environment, to risk provoking the question of its probability, giving in to the irreducible sovereignty of life, this was the beginning of an unknown experience: what can paint and PAINTING be.’ As he himself confirms, Manolo Quejido began to paint by radically questioning pictorial activity. His acrylic series on card, small- and large-format pieces made between 1974 and 1978, attest to this.

In the turbulent context of the Spanish Transition, Quejido notes that painting, as an economically determined cultural process, implies a contradiction. And yet he decided to become a painter. Since then, the theme of his pictorial practice has been the motto ‘paint or think’. With a language close to Pop and Neo-Expressionism, he constructs his images from irony, freshness, joy and social commitment. Some, like Martillo and El parte, show a clear linguistic or referential dimension. While Martillo (Hammer) tracks the iconicity of the word hammer, turning the ‘t’ into a hammer, El parte (The Statement) shows the image of a watch with its function as a ‘statement’ on human life. In Un siglo (A Century), he paints a calendar with key dates in the history of Spain in the twentieth century, such as the beginning of the Civil War in 1936 and the death of Franco and the end of the dictatorship in 1975. In De veraneo (Summer Holiday), he cynically paints two shelves packed with skulls.


Technical details

Original title:
Martillo
Registration number:
2818
Artist:
Quejido, Manolo
Date created:
1977
Date acquired:
2006
Fonds:
MACBA Collection. MACBA Foundation
Object type:
Painting
Media:
Acrylic on cardboard
Dimensions:
100 x 71.5 cm (height x width)
Credits:
MACBA Collection. MACBA Foundation. Work purchased thanks to Fundación Catalana Occidente
Copyright:
© Manolo Quejido, VEGAP, Barcelona
It has accessibility resources:
Yes

Accessibility resources
High-relief image
Texts in braille

The MACBA Collection features Catalan, Spanish and international art and, although it includes works from the 1920s onwards, its primary focus is on the period between the 1960s and the present.

For more information on the work or the artist, please consult MACBA's Library. To request a loan of the work, please write to colleccio [at] macba.cat.

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