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Miguel Condé

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Miguel Condé
Born (1939-05-31) May 31, 1939 (age 85)
Pittsburgh, United States
NationalityMexican
EducationAtelier 17 with Stanley William Hayter
Known forPainting, printmaking, drawing, book art
MovementFigurative expressionism
AwardsMacDowell Fellowship (1966)
Guggenheim Fellowship (1974)

Miguel Condé (born 1939) is a Mexican figurative painter, draughtsman, and print maker. According to Radio France, he is "one of the most important contemporary masters in the field of engraving."[1] Condé's works are in important museum collections all over the world; he is exhibiting regularly at both public and private venues, and he has received numerous international honors and awards.

Early life

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Miguel Condé was born in Pittsburgh, to Salvador Condé Álvarez, a Mexican painter, and Victoria Weiner, an American poet. He grew up in his father's house in Mexico. Although the house was not a traditional artist's atelier, it was a place where Salvador drew and painted and which Miguel found to be "a very attractive place because all the walls were painted a strange shade of green, and it was full of stuff like papier-mâché skeletons. It was a magic place where you could make up all sorts of stories."[2] Young Condé split his time between Mexico and the United States until 1948 when he moved to New York with his mother. He attended P.S. 6 and Walden School, both in Manhattan, and graduated in 1956.

Career

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[My paintings are] a narrative which could be carried out on stage as well as on canvas, perhaps even on film. Of course, the ultimate narrative is our lives as we lead them.[2]

–Miguel Condé

In 1956, at age 17, Condé rented a studio in New York and began to study anatomy with renowned American artist and anatomist Stephen Rogers Peck, author of the classic manual Atlas for Human Anatomy for the Artist. He also attended courses taught by the Harvard Art History professor and curator Millard Meiss, at the Fogg Art Museum. Condé returned to Mexico in 1959 and settled in Tepoztlán, a popular tourist destination near Mexico City. In 1963 he was awarded a scholarship by the French government (Bourse d’Etudes Libres), so he moved to Paris where he studied with Stanley William Hayter in his Atelier 17.[3]

In 1966, Condé returned to the United States and soon afterwards accepted a teaching position in drawing and mixed media in the graduate program at the University of Iowa School of Art. In Iowa City he met and befriended an Argentinian-born American artist and printmaker Mauricio Lasansky and the influential Chilean author José Donoso. Condé became a MacDowell Fellow in 1966 and concentrated full-time on his work in visual arts. In 1968, his solo exhibition opened to critical acclaim at the prestigious Galería de Arte Mexicano in Mexico City. Later that year, William Liebrerman, curator of MoMA, acquired two of his drawings for the permanent collection of the New York Museum of Modern Art.[4]

In 1969, he traveled to France and then moved with his family to Sitges, Catalonia, Spain.

In 1971, Condé worked at the Smithsonian Institution Print Workshop in Barcelona, which reignited his interest in graphic art. It was then that he met the prominent Spanish art dealer and print publisher Juana Mordó who offered him his first exhibition in Spain, which occurred in 1974. He became a foreign Artist-in-residence at the Cleveland Institute of Art in Ohio, in 1972. An exhibition at the Cleveland Museum of Art took place the following year.

In 1974, Condé was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship by the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. In 1976, Miguel Condé: paintings and drawings exhibition was organized by the Scottish Arts Council and took place in Edinburgh, Scotland. In 1977, Condé participated in Documenta 6 in Kassel, Germany.[5] In 1978, an exhibition Miguel Condé: Guggenheim Suite took place at the Biblioteca Nacional de España in Madrid. In 1980, he was invited and took part in Peintres-Graveurs Français exhibition at the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris.

In 1983, the Ministry of Culture of Spain organized an extensive retrospective exhibition Miguel Condé: 20 años de obra grabada at the Sala Picasso of Biblioteca Nacional de España in Madrid. In a review of Condé's graphic work on display there, art critic and prolific author Fernando Huici opined that it was "paper—already forgotten in the absurd hierarchy of genres—in both drawing and engraving, where Condé finds most freedom, where he expresses with greater ease his particular vocabulary of images... "[6] Another retrospective of the artist, Miguel Condé: Pinturas, Gouaches, Dibujos, opened at the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum later the same year.[7]

In 1993, Condé met a Danish born, Madrid based printer and publisher Dan Benveniste, who would become his printer and, eventually, a collaborator in graphic projects.[8] That same year, Ediciones Eegee-3 published 19 etchings printed by Dan Benveniste and presented them at the Fundación Carlos de Amberes in Madrid.

In 1998, a large scale installation Grandes Formatos opened at the Centro Cultural del Conde Duque in Madrid, Spain. The critically acclaimed exhibition was sponsored by the City council of Madrid and received a lot of media attention. Discussing his work with the art critic of the influential Spanish El País, Condé said, "My characters are fictional and come from fantasy, but they are not surreal. I always paint figuratively, and everyone has to interpret each work for himself... The treatment is different in painting versus drawing, denser and more susceptible to complex situations. Painting is dominated by gesture, by brushstroke and material, and I tend to concentrate on the character, without adding landscapes or architecture."[9] In 1999, a collection of Condé's recent paintings went on exhibit at the Sales San Fernando in Seville, Spain. Both exhibitions were timed to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Condé's permanent move to Spain.[10]

Numerous other exhibitions at both private and public venues followed,[11][12] the more recent ones taking place in 2011, at the Museo del Grabado Español Contemporáneo in Marbella, Spain[13] and the Goya Museum in Castres, France.[14] Reviewing one such exhibition, J.M. Martí Font, Paris bureau chief for El Pais,[15] quoted the prominent art scholar and author Maria Lluïsa Borràs, who wrote that Condé "revels in recovery for modernity subjects fitting of Cervantes or Quevedo, scenes and characters that evoke the aesthetics of the late Middle Ages even though they find themselves on the fringes of both time and history. In his compositions, increasingly more complex and meticulous, the absurd and the enigmatic gradually come together, Goya’s black irony, Bosch’s phantasmagorias, Brueghel’s repulsion and fluidity, and Dürer’s virtuoso drawing."[16] A similar sentiment was expressed by art critic Fernando Huici who remarked in 1983 that "the world that inhabits Condé's creations, the world of his intimate fascinations, always maintains a Brueghelian flavor."[6]

In 2012, Miguel Condé was featured in Michael Peppiatt's book Interviews with artists 1966 – 2012, published by the Yale University Press, along such post-war and contemporary masters as Francis Bacon, Balthus, Henry Moore, Diego Giacometti, Jean Dubuffet, Sean Scully, and Antoni Tàpies, to name a few.[17]

Personal life

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Miguel Condé married Carola Schisel in Mexico, in 1960. They have two children: a son Amadeo, who was born in Paris in 1964, and a daughter, Caëtana María del Pilar, who was born in Iowa City in 1969. They split their time between Madrid and Sitges, Spain, where Condé works and maintains studios.

Awards and honors

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Selected museum collections

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Selected works

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References

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  1. ^ Miguel Condé, gentleman del grabado, Radio France Radio France Official web site
  2. ^ a b Peppiatt, Michael. Miguel Condé: Pêle-mêle, 1972-2006, page 23. Barcelona: Edifici Miramar, 2007. ISBN 978-8489948587. Retrieved 32 August 2012.
  3. ^ Artists Who Have Worked at Atelier 17 (1950-1988)
  4. ^ Flores, Oliver (15 October 2010). "Inspiración mediterránea" (PDF). Excélsior. Retrieved 31 August 2012.
  5. ^ Documenta 6 List of Artists
  6. ^ a b Huici, Fernando (31 December 1983). "Magia y evocación en los grabados de Miguel Condé". El País. Retrieved 31 August 2012.
  7. ^ Artista: Miguel Condé on Mudmedia
  8. ^ Se inaugura la Exposición El Canto del Grabado de Miguel Condé OBRA GRÁFICA 1977-2007 Marbella TV
  9. ^ Samaniego, Fernando (5 December 1998). "Miguel Condé expone sus personajes en grandes formatos". El Pais. Retrieved 31 August 2012.
  10. ^ Molina, Margot (5 February 1999). "El pintor Miguel Condé celebra con una muestra sus 25 años en España". El Pais. Retrieved 31 August 2012.
  11. ^ Miguel Condé: Pele-mele 1972-2006 ArtDaily Official web site
  12. ^ El Cant del Gravat Andorra Official web site
  13. ^ El Museo del Grabado inaugura la exposición de Miguel Condé 'El Canto del Grabado' Marbella Official web site
  14. ^ "Castres. Vernissage au Musée Goya". La Dépêche du Midi. 16 March 2011. Retrieved 31 August 2012.
  15. ^ J.M. Martí Font, chef du bureau parisien du quotidien espagnol "El Pais" Libération Official web site
  16. ^ Martí Font, J.M. (10 June 2012). "El rocambolesco Miguel Condé". El Pais. Retrieved 31 August 2012.
  17. ^ Stevenson, Talitha (31 March 2012). "Interviews with Artists, 1966‑2012 by Michael Peppiatt – review". The Guardian. Retrieved 31 August 2012.
  18. ^ List of Artists Archived 2009-05-26 at the Wayback Machine MacDowell Colony Official web site
  19. ^ List of Guggenheim Fellows Guggenheim Fellowship Official web site
  20. ^ List of Award Recipients Mapfre Official web site
  21. ^ Miguel Condé. Untitled Museum of Modern Art Official web site
  22. ^ Untitled Brooklyn Museum Official web site
  23. ^ Messerschmitt Cleveland Museum of Art Official web site
  24. ^ Untitled (1972–1973) University of Iowa Museum of Art Official web site
  25. ^ Sin título Colección MAPFRE Official web site
  26. ^ Untitled (drinkers) (1993) Essex Collection of Art from Latin America (ESCALA), University of Essex Official web site
  27. ^ Sin título Biblioteca Nacional de España Official web site

Bibliography

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