Francisco Sobrino

FRANCISCO SOBRINO  (1932-2014, Spain-France)

“…using geometrical forms enabled me to understand what I was doing, it helped me to tell things in a clear language. I wanted to create a kind of alphabet of elementary and impersonal forms, with which I could build sentences. I still have the same desire: to be clear.”

Born to a working class family in Guadalajara, Spain, Francisco Sobrino began his studies of painting and sculpture at the School of Arts and Crafts in Madrid, between 1946 and 1948. He moved to Argentina in 1949, and studied at the Escuela de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires from 1950 to 1957. During this period, he met many of the artists and writers involved with the Arte Concreto-Invención group, and he began working in geometric abstraction. At the Escuela de Bellas Artes, he also met Hugo Demarco, Julio Le Parc, and Horacio Garcia Rossi. In 1959, Sobrino moved to Paris with Le Parc, where they co-founded the Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel (GRAV). In 1960, Sobrino began making reliefs and then three-dimensional constructions from transparent, tinted acrylic plastic. These works were the first of his explorations of juxtaposition and superimposition between the viewer and the work of art. In 1965, his work was included in The Responsive Eye exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York.

In their 1966 manifesto, GRAV’s members write, “We are particularly interested in the proliferation of works which permit a variety of situations, whether they engender a strong visual excitement, or demand a move on the part of the spectator, or contain in themselves a principle of transformation, or whether they call for active participation from the spectator.” Light and movement were of special interest to the artists of GRAV, but they were careful to avoid using these as ends in themselves. Instead, light and movement were ways of modifying a particular environment and creating an unexpected situation, to which audience members could respond. The group hoped that such interactive works might lead to a social movement, based around collective experience and viewer participation. After numerous group exhibitions throughout Europe, GRAV separated in 1968.

Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, NY, USA

Beacon Collection, Boston, MA, USA

Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France

Centre National d’Art Plastique, Paris, France

Colección del Parlamento Provincial, Guadalajara, Spain

Fondazione Peggy Guggenheim, Venice, Italy

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C., USA

Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Cholet, France

Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Bilbao, Spain

Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Madrid, Spain

Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Villafanes, Spain