Rogelio López Cuenca, National Prize for Plastic Arts 2022

The jury has pointed out that his career “is essential to string together the critical history of Spanish art from the 1980s to the present” Cuenca’s works move within the tradition of institutional criticism and the drifts of pop, through multiple media such as painting or publishingIn his beginnings, the artist investigates around music and collaborative work and addresses issues such as the space of the city and popular languageRogelio López Cuenca has been awarded the National Prize for Plastic Arts, corresponding to the year 2022, at the proposal of the jury meeting this Tuesday, September 20, as reported by the Ministry of Culture and Sports. The award is endowed with 30,000 euros. The jury has pointed out that his career “is essential to string together the critical history of Spanish art from the 1980s to the present.” “Interested in invoking the silenced memories of the past” In addition, the jury He has highlighted that “his work is based on a commitment to historical time and to the territory in which he has lived, the transformations and continuities of Spanish society at the turn of the century, the violence and dislocations that globalization entails.” At the same time, he points out that “he is interested in invoking the silenced memories of the past and in the way in which the imposed silences order the real and symbolic space in the present.”Rogelio López Cuenca (Nerja, 1959), graduated in Philosophy and Letters from the University of Malaga and a doctorate in Fine Arts from the University of Castilla-La Mancha, he has worked since the beginning of his career, in the eighties, at the crossroads of poetry with the visual arts. s and the mass media. His works move within the tradition of institutional criticism and the drifts of pop, through multiple media such as painting, installation, urban intervention and publishing. Initially, he investigated around music and collaborative work and addresses issues such as the space of the city, popular language and the language of the avant-garde. Starting in 1992, the year of the Seville Expo and the Barcelona Olympics, a point of inflection in his work, and he begins to make critical interventions with the system, with topics such as migratory policies, historical memory or urban speculation. National and international collections Throughout his career, he has been awarded various scholarships such as the the Spanish Academy of Fine Arts in Rome and his work has been recognized by various awards such as El Ojo Critico of RNE or the Francisco de Goya Award of the Madrid City Council. His work has been collected by numerous individual and collective publications and exhibitions, including the retrospective organized by the Reina Sofía National Art Center Museum (Madrid), ‘Going Reading, Giving Place’ in 2019; ‘A quel Paese’ at the Academia de España in Rome or ‘Las Islas’ in Es Baluard’ (Palma de Mallorca). His work forms part of different collections of both national and international institutions, such as the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Queen Sofia (Madrid); National Library (Madrid); Artium (Vitoria); MUSAC (Leon); Andalusian Center for Contemporary Art; Patio Herreriano Museum (Valladalid); La Caixa Foundation (Barcelona); National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana (Cuba); BESART (Lisbon); Collection Fonds Nationals d’Art Contemporain de Paris (France).Members of the juryThe jury, chaired by Isaac Sastre de Diego, general director of Cultural Heritage and Fine Arts of the Ministry of Culture and Sports, and acting as vice-president, Mercedes Roldán Sánchez, deputy director General of State Museums, has been formed by Dora García, award-winning artist in the 2021 edition; Ángeles Albert, director of the Academy of Spain in Rome; Joaquín Vázquez Ruiz, co-founder of BNV Producciones and president of the Independent Platform for Modern and Contemporary Flamenco Studies; Jesús María Carrillo Castillo, professor at the Department of History and Theory of Art at the Autonomous University of Madrid; Rocío Robles, Professor of Art History at the Department of Art History at the Complutense University of Madrid; Isabel Izquierdo, director of programming for Acción Cultural Española, AC/E; and Isabel Tejeda, professor at the University of Murcia.