The referents are guides, they are admirations, they are built to grow. Every artist has and has contributed to create a new style, a new talent, a new reference for the future.

This exhibition examines different periods of Josep Guinovart, teaches how his artistic masters engage in their works, and also that important were for him, as he even made pieces that titled Homage. The format of the exhibition is still a piece of Guinovart with a reproduction of one of its references.

The beginnings are the moments when every person needs roots to forge and mirror themselves. Guinovart, in his educational stage, went through the Market. There, the reference artists were Francesc Gimeno, Isidre Nonell and Joaquim Mir. The first two were very revealing at the beginning; Some sketches on paper link the first works with this more intimate style. But he quickly moved away, never renouncing his first steps.

As a place was emerging in the emerging art of Barcelona, ​​he knew the works of Cézanne and Gauguin; Thanks to them, he had the first approach to still lifes and knots. As you can see, these prominent painters in the avant-garde only left a few strokes in their style. The artist is created while nurturing everything that is within his reach. And not only visual art created the imagination of Josep Guinovart: literature, music and historical events, as well as politicians, also built their expression.

A major moment in his career as an artist was his stay in Paris. In the French capital, he knew a great variety of referents, more modern and breakthrough styles: Mondrian, Van Gogh, Kandinski, Braque, Picasso, Miró ... Paris was at the forefront of the Spanish social and political situation and, at the same time, it was an opportunity to live with the contemporary art of the moment. Paris was a whirlwind of references for him.
Picasso and Miró will be two of the most present artists who have been in the production of Guinovart, in the form of explicit and implicit tributes. It is for this reason that, in this exhibition, both are represented by two works of art, because their weight has been crucial in the career of Guino.

It's when he came back from Paris that he broke up with figuration. His style was ripening, but not for that reason it stopped having new influences, that were giving shades, varieties and counterpoint to their pieces.

"Referents" is presented as a tasting of the authors who created the style of Josep Guinovart, stimuli that allowed him to leave a great artistic production, which today is a reference for many emerging artists.

Lara Vidal Santorum
Historian of art