Jordi Curos

Self portrait oil on cardboard painting

c.1980

Jordi Curós Ventura (Olot, Girona, March 4, 1930) is a Spanish painter. He trained at the Olot School of Arts and Crafts, a center of great artistic tradition. His first individual exhibition was held in the Garden of Barcelona galleries in 1950. In 1951, he began his participation in the October Salons of Barcelona. Among the Catalan artists that emerged from this important demonstration, Curós stood out, from the beginning, for his pictorial faculties and personality. Between 1958 and 1963 his painting goes through a stage of abstract tendency, with colorful arabesques and paintings with enamel qualities. Later, he will assume a figurative style characterized by the importance of light and the interest in instant capture. He belonged to the Parés room group, where he exhibited successive times between 1965 and 1989. His work is perfectly recognized, from the first stage, figurative, contemporary to the aforementioned Halls, of masses of colors clearly delimited by a marked drawing, until the current form, back to the representation, of more nuanced color, going through its stage informalist, in that his basal paintings, forming a kind of ovals, were recognized by their personal concept. In his informal era, he is attracted, by the material possibilities, by performing large-scale works, also the use of bright enamels that "turn his painting into a continuous exaltation of the textural-chromatic factor", according to Lourdes Cirlot. Carlos Areán, affirms that his painting "has evolved from a traditional figurativism of wide planes, marked volumes and solid structure, towards a technically studied use of the most varied new materials, with the consequent suppression of any objective pretext ". The influence of Informalism gives way to images taken of the natural in marine environments and markets full of flowers and fruits. The colors are piled in successive layers that overlap even on plaster to give the canvas textures of a great boldness. Figures and colors almost Fauve coexist in it with abstract pieces that allow to enjoy a different and absolutely personal vision of life. He personally exhibited in Barcelona: Sala Caralt (1952/53); Galleries Layetanas (1953); Syra Galleries (1954-55); Vayreda Hall (1956-59). In Madrid, his presentation took effect in 1953, in Biosca Galleries. He also did it individually at the Mendoza Galleries in Caracas. In 1952 he was selected by Eugenio d'Ors to appear in the X Hall of the Eleven and in 1953 he participated in the II Hispano-American Biennial of Havana, appearing in large groups such as the III Spanish-American Biennial, Space and Color in the Spanish Painting today (Rio de Janeiro, 1959 and Montevideo, 1960). Current Catalan painting (Lisbon and Porto, 1960) or Figure, informal tribute to Diego Velázquez (1960); Contrasts in the current Spanish painting (Brussels, 1961); 3rd Granollers Prize for Painting, High-tapestry Tapestries, Contemporary Artists Tapestries (Biosca Galleries, 1961), May Room, Independence Hall. Gaudí of two scholarships, awarded in 1954, the first by the French Institute of Barcelona, ​​to move to Paris.