José María Báez

Involved with poetic movements in his youth, for a long time Báez's work maintained an active presence of literature and narrative through the use of poetic quotations, inserted in his paintings in the form of Roman/Renaissance script. The plot-like nature of his pieces required a close connection to installation. He began with figuration and ended up on a more conceptual plane where color is the indispensable element, the key to revealing his works. In the artist's view, both classical and contemporary art are in need of revision, for "art is always a document of our time". Báez seeks a source of aesthetic, philosophical, and pragmatic completion in the set-up, the conversion of the exhibition space into one huge installation by making its walls a living part of his own experience and the one he intends to share with the audience. The work of José María Báez (b. Jerez de la Frontera, 1949, lives in Córdoba since the 1960s) exemplifies the pictorial trend of figurative expressionism that characterized the 1980s and was embraced by many other young Andalusian artists. --Museum website.