SPAIN (2020)-Contemporary Art Souvenir Sheet

Considered to be one of the pioneers of abstract art in Spain, Lucio Muñoz is the star of the stamp that Correos is issuing this year on Contemporary Art.

Born in Madrid in 1929, he was a part of the 1950s generation of artists.

He began his career focussing on landscapes and then went on to be truly committed to Abstract Expressionism which became clear during his time in Paris.

Back in Spain, at the end of the 1950s, two exhibitions, one in the Fernando Fe Gallery and another in the Ateneo, placed him firmly within the Spanish avant garde.

Lucio Muñoz’s work is fascinating, amongst other things, due to the fusion of traditional materials in his works with other more surprising ones for this kind of work, such as earth, paper or cardboard.

In 1983 he won the National Visual Arts Prize. At the time he was coming up with work that was much more scenic, naturalist, romantic and effusive, where wood is included spontaneously as just one more element.

Wood, one of the most revolutionary materials he works with, leads him to create works using laminates which he transforms by scratching or burning.

The work on the stamp devoted to the artist is an example of these techniques. It is the work El cono del bosque Kobernaus (The Kobernaus forest cone), inspired by the novel Correction by Thomas Bernhard, who greatly influenced his artistic career.

A particularly hypnotic, powerful work, the main element is a kind of native American tepee, although the artist, based on the book mentioned previously, could be suggesting an ancient, ruined burial monument which is being devoured by the forest and by time.

Once again, a stamp depicts a great work of art which is reflected in another, smaller in size and which, just like art, prevails and has a huge capacity for dissemination.