Hernández Pijuan

Born in Barcelona in 1931, Joan Hernandez Pijuan got his formation in the Llotja School, the Barcelona School or Arts and Trades and the Sant Jordi School of Fine Arts. In 1955, he held his first solo exhibition in Mataró Municipal Museum.

He is the founder of the ephemeral “Silex Group”, together with Carles Planell and Eduard Alcoy.

In 1957, he studied engraving and lithography in the Paris School of Fine Arts, adopting geometric figures, and in which his solitary elements stand out (fruit, glasses, eggs …) on backgrounds and plain grounds, with bands of grey and green colours, and including mathematical elements such as grids that all suggest a magic atmosphere.

It would not be until the middle of the 80s when his work commenced to be characterized by the use of a palette of only black and white, fruit of a rigorous and systematic abstraction which would be his own style thereafterwards.

As from 1977, he worked as a teacher in the Sant Jordi School of Fine Arts in Barcelona, making his creative activity compatible with his teaching one. In 1979, his graphic work deserved the awarded recognition by the exacting Cabinet des Estampes del Musée d’Art et d’Histoire of Geneva.

In 1980 he went on to form part of the activities commission within the Miró Foundation in Barcelona.

In 1989 he took the chair of the Professorship of Painting in the Fine Arts faculty at Barcelona University where he iwas named Dean in 1992. He was named Fine Arts Academic in 1997. The Reina Sofía National Art Centre in 1993 held an anthological exhibition called “Spaces of silence”, and after his death, the Moscow Museum of Modern Art in 2011 held a retrospective exhibition of his works. He was also awarded the National Prize of Plastic Arts in Madrid in 1981, “the Saint George Cross” by the Generalidad de Cataluña in 1985. And he went on to win the National Graphic Art prize in 2004, just one year before his passing away in Barcelona.

Exhibited Works

• “LA NUBE”, etching on Arches paper, 1991.
• “NUBES”, etching on Arches paper, 1991.
• “Sin título”, Chinese ink on paper, 1963.