José María Yturralde, National Prize for Plastic Arts
The artist Jose Maria Yturralde (Cuenca, 1942) one of the key painters of Spanish geometric abstraction and author of a work that links science and art, has been recognized this Thursday with the National Prize of Plastic Arts 2020.
The jury of the award, endowed with 30,000 euros, has highlighted the trajectory of Yturralde for its "high level of experimentality", which has connected art and science, its spatial and formal research, and its teaching task, points out the Ministry of Culture and Sports, which grants the award, in a note.
Yturralde, with a work marked by shape and color, has developed throughout his career a type of art linked to science.
He is the director of the painting department of the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV), a graduate and PhD in Fine Arts from the UPV and a full-time academic at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Carlos de Valencia.
His career begins in the mid-sixties, when he goes through a stage of experimentation and evolves towards geometric abstraction and "op-art", for which he is best known today, with influences from Vasarely, the Italian spatialists and constructivism.
In 1966 he worked at the Museum of Spanish Abstract Art in Cuenca. In 1967 he was a founding member of the Group 'Before Art' and began to make kinetic art; His interest in technology was accentuated with his participation in seminars at the Calculus Center of the Complutense University of Madrid, which introduced him to working with computers.
Yturralde was one of the promoters in Spain of cybernetic art and has done laser and holographic work.
Throughout his career he has received numerous awards and in 1974 he was awarded a scholarship by the Juan March Foundation for a stay at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Among his most outstanding works are the 'Flying structures', three-dimensional pieces capable of flying, with which he participated in the 38th Venice Biennale (1978).
In the eighties he returned to the shot with a more poetic attitude, while remaining constructively rigorous. In his most recent works, he has focused on the study of color and its influence on emotions and mood.
The artist has published numerous works including articles, papers and communications, and is the author of the books'Structures 1968-1972: Triangular-Square-Cubes-Prisms Series' Y 'The fourth dimension. Methodological test for the geometric projection of N-Dimensional structures'.
The jury has been chaired by María Dolores Jiménez-Blanco, general director of Fine Arts and has been made up of Angels Ribé Pijuan, Juan Carlos Moya Zafra, Manuel Fontán del Junco, José Luis Pérez Pont, Orlando Britto Jinorio, Begoña Torres González and Susana Blas Brunel.
