Marta Cárdenas (1944)
San Sebastián
San Sebastián
One of the most solid figures in contemporary Art. Few creators are able to achieve the admiration and respect of most of the artists of their own generation as she does.
In Marta Cárdenas’s work, above all, we can recognize the emotion of discovering an extraordinary image. From the twilight rooms that typified her early period to the earth colors and textures that she has learned from prehistoric art found in France and Spain.
Her characteristic curiosity and interest her led her to explore almost all types of plastic language from the time she entered and became part of the Artistic Association of Guipuzcoa, at barely 15 years of age. In 1963 she entered the San Fernando School of Fine Arts (Madrid) where she would remain until 1969. Then she received a scholarship from the French government to broaden her studies for six months in Paris, and she began to exhibit individually.
In 1970 she returned to Spain and basically worked on paintings of interior scenes that emanated nostalgia and poetry. Her notebooks are filled with the notations she has made in the most unusual places, from the check-out line at the supermarket to her studio window. Her drawings became more sketchy and geometry gained importance in compositions that never really reach abstraction.
In 1980 she married the composer Luis de Pablo, and a grant from the Juan March Foundation allowed her to set up a studio in Madrid, the city where she has lived since then. It is precisely in this period when she intensified her outdoor work, and landscapes have become more prominent than ever among her paintings. Madrid, San Sebastian, Lisbon, Milan . . . show after show, and her name has become one of the essential ones at ARCO. The most important galleries vie to represent her, and great museums such as the Reina Sofía purchase her work.
With the advent of the 90s, Marta Cárdenas’s creative evolution took a new turn. Following a long trip through India, she began to use vivid colors, and her canvases and drawings filled with abstract motifs. This tendency has become more accentuated in recent years with the influence of post neolithic painting in Mediterranean Spain and North Africa, an inexhaustible source of inspiration for her.
Her attraction to distant cultures is present in the background of the plantlike forms and other exotic motifs that enrich her most recent paintings and prints. All of this without a radical break from the poetic atmosphere that bathed her creations of the 1970s.
It is not easy to resist the emotion that Marta Cárdenas transmits with only pencil and paper. Her works are present in important public and private collections all over the world, and the value of her work grows at a constant rate. However, some of her paintings can still be found at affordable prices, especially in the Spanish market.
In Marta Cárdenas’s work, above all, we can recognize the emotion of discovering an extraordinary image. From the twilight rooms that typified her early period to the earth colors and textures that she has learned from prehistoric art found in France and Spain.
Her characteristic curiosity and interest her led her to explore almost all types of plastic language from the time she entered and became part of the Artistic Association of Guipuzcoa, at barely 15 years of age. In 1963 she entered the San Fernando School of Fine Arts (Madrid) where she would remain until 1969. Then she received a scholarship from the French government to broaden her studies for six months in Paris, and she began to exhibit individually.
In 1970 she returned to Spain and basically worked on paintings of interior scenes that emanated nostalgia and poetry. Her notebooks are filled with the notations she has made in the most unusual places, from the check-out line at the supermarket to her studio window. Her drawings became more sketchy and geometry gained importance in compositions that never really reach abstraction.
In 1980 she married the composer Luis de Pablo, and a grant from the Juan March Foundation allowed her to set up a studio in Madrid, the city where she has lived since then. It is precisely in this period when she intensified her outdoor work, and landscapes have become more prominent than ever among her paintings. Madrid, San Sebastian, Lisbon, Milan . . . show after show, and her name has become one of the essential ones at ARCO. The most important galleries vie to represent her, and great museums such as the Reina Sofía purchase her work.
With the advent of the 90s, Marta Cárdenas’s creative evolution took a new turn. Following a long trip through India, she began to use vivid colors, and her canvases and drawings filled with abstract motifs. This tendency has become more accentuated in recent years with the influence of post neolithic painting in Mediterranean Spain and North Africa, an inexhaustible source of inspiration for her.
Her attraction to distant cultures is present in the background of the plantlike forms and other exotic motifs that enrich her most recent paintings and prints. All of this without a radical break from the poetic atmosphere that bathed her creations of the 1970s.
It is not easy to resist the emotion that Marta Cárdenas transmits with only pencil and paper. Her works are present in important public and private collections all over the world, and the value of her work grows at a constant rate. However, some of her paintings can still be found at affordable prices, especially in the Spanish market.