GUADALUPE LUCEÑO
"Born in Spain in 1960, Guadalupe Luceño grew up and lived in Switzerland and Germany until the end of the 1980s. Since her childhood she was educated the plastic arts, music and dance, changing residence frequently over the course of two decades, moving between Spain, Switzerland and Germany, until she settled in Madrid (Spain) where she currently lives and works.
The German cultural environment influenced her understanding of art, given the importance of the concrete movement especially in Switzerland in the 1970s. She would never abandon geometric abstraction/concrete art.
She studied Hispanic philology and was appointed Sworn Court Translator and Interpreter for German by the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 2001 she joined the Spanish Conference Interpreters’ Association (AICE) and had her first solo exhibition in Madrid. She would combine both activities until 2022, when she left interpreting for good. That same year she was included in the Archive of Abstract Artists in Spain (AAAeE) of the Juan March Foundation.
About twenty solo exhibitions in Germany, Spain and Syria. More than thirty international projects in Croatia, Germany, Spain, USA, Italy, Poland, Portugal and Syria. Guest artist in the I Biennial of Contemporary Art in Izmir (Turkey, 2011), elected for the V Beijing International Art Biennial (China, 2012) and for the I San Lucas Biennial of Contemporary Art in Plasencia (Spain, 2019).
In 2024 she won the second prize in the Frida Kahlo Painting Juried Competition (Madrid). Finalist of: I International Contest of Abstract Art Mario Saslovsky (Madrid, 2019), XX Engraving Award of San Lorenzo de El Escorial (Madrid, 2019), XXVI Painting Biennial Villa de Noreña (Asturias, 2022), XXV Plastic Arts Award of Cáceres (Spain, 2022), XLVII National Painting Contest Villa de Pego (Alicante, 2023) and Antonio López Painting and Sculpture Contest (Madrid, 2023). "
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The Memory of Temples III (Quadriptych), 120 x 120 cm, Oil/wood, 2009
" Work belonging to the series “The Memory of Temples", consisting of 21 works between 2007-2013, all oil on birch panel. The series is a reflection on the ultimate truth of our existence.
The association of temple and memory evokes the Temple of the memory-of-the-Law of the Ezekielian vision destined to veil, hide and encrypt a knowledge reserved for the priestly elite. Examples of this are the Temple-city, the perfect city, the Celestial Jerusalem -which Luceño had already evoked in his mandalic series (Colors of the Celestial City I and II)- and the Platonic vision of the city seen as a temple.
To decipher this existential knowledge and transcend our earthly confinement, human beings have resorted to reason and faith, which have turned out to be insufficient, because we need techniques of the spirit with which to unravel the mystery of life through memory and imagination. We need to imagine, because "the human being continues to be," in addition to being rational and believing, "a sentient and imaginative animal and, for this reason, his self-control, his inner harmony, his happiness, in short, depend on the art with which he manages his representations, imaginations and feelings. That is to say, the art with which he coordinates and arranges the objects that rest in the complex space of his personal identity" (Ignacio Gómez de Liaño, Filosofos griegos, videntes judíos, Siruela).
“The Memory of Temples" is thus an attempt to structure geometrically that fascinating idea that associates the temple with memory, in which Luceño applies the Fibonacci series as a structural element that configures the harmony and proportions of the works that make up the series."
The Memory of Temples VII, 89 x 89 cm, Oil/wood, 2009
The Earth Awakens, 40 x 40 cm, Oil/wood, 2023
"Work belonging to the series "Back to Fibonacci " which is not merely a return to his famous series, but also to spirituality in art through geometric abstraction, to the exploration of the free play of visual sensations and to the golden section that began to guide Luceño's compositions starting with "The Memory of Temples", years after experimenting with the visual sensations of mandalic geometry. The work alludes to the hope that the earth will awaken from the lethargy caused by droughts and human interventions.