Lola Boss (Valencia, 1922-Thalwil, Switzerland, 2012) is an artist erased from art history. It took on a somewhat plain look in the 60s. Aguilera Cerni and sincere support Juan Antonio AguirrAnd; professors Pascual Patuel in the last 80, Paula Barreiro researcher in 2009 Clara Solbes Borja Last year, they approached the painter from the academic environment in collective and contextual works. Exhibition currently on view José de la Mano gallery in Madrid, This work, curated by Isabel Tejeda, is the first to investigate and analyze the events.This “secret” painter In depth after meeting in Valencia A significant part of his unpublished legacy.
In addition to the exhibition, this first work by Tejeda reference publicationPresents Bosshard comor One of the pioneers of Minimal painting and “Ambient Art” -it was called environmentalism at that time- in our country. Numerous pieces have been examined and dated; some of these are presented in the current exhibition: paintings specifically related to the exhibition setting of the Spanish-Swiss artist. Edurne gallery in 1967.
Orbit
Studied at Lola Bosshard St. Charles of Valencia in the post-war period, between 1939 and 1943. Between 1948 and 1951 he received a parallel diploma in Fine Arts at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Zurich; This was the city’s higher technical school of applied arts; It was an institution founded in 1878 and headed at that time by Johannes Itten (1938-1954). Yaacov Agam was also there and predictably had to meet in Paris in 1952. Referring to his studies in Switzerland, he would recall in 1973: “That school opened me up to colours. “I think color should be expressionistic, and that’s where I learned that.” After Zurich, Bosshard moved to Paris. Both will have students in the capital of France André Lhote as Fernand Léger (Nancy Spero, Leonilda González or Bengt Lindström, for example, would pass through the latter’s academy); He will also study at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, where he must have attended the Atelier d’Art Abstrait.
He returned to Valencia in the early 60s, where he joined numerous collectives. In 1961, he participated in an exhibition organized by Ateneo and added another personal exhibition to it. In Martínez-Medina (1962), one of the main venues of those years; Will follow your participation IV and V March Hall (1963 and 1964, respectively) and other solo exhibitions in the Sala Mateu (1964) or in the Radio Valencia room (1964). During these years Bosshard actively a gestural informalism, He is largely in line with some Spanish writers from El Paso, such as Rafael Canogar or Juana Francés, who used the collage technique.
Geometric abstraction would permeate his production since at least 1966, encountering a shift in palette and language by the end of the decade. He opened the most daring exhibition of his career at the Edurne gallery in Madrid in February 1967; He designed a series of large paintings: work that he described as “very avant-garde” and later described as “ambient”. monochrome, with other areas of color creating visual and environmental dialogues in the space’s two rooms. It could be The first environmentally friendly painting exhibition in Spain.
Bosshard experimented with simple, minimalizing and reductive color bands; It is possible that he started painting colored fields in stripes in 1965, a year after his visit to the Biennale; it is also possible that he started after revisiting the Italian event in 1966. In some pieces, he manipulates the surface of the fabric with four planes; Sometimes it is governed by horizontality and sometimes by verticality. He also paints monochrome fabrics, and as he stated years later in a press interview, it was from these Minimal pieces (he never uses this term, by the way) that he dared to work white on white, and the result did not satisfy him.
What do you see
The table you see is this: color planes that geometrically distribute the pictorial surface inside that smoothness. Its references are in Malevich’s zero-degree painting (1918) or Rodchenko’s monochromes of 1921. His connection to Minimal is clear in his statements: “In ’67 I exhibited some 2-metre canvases, some of them monochrome, because the literature in painting made me radically angry…”.
In October of the same year, Bosshard was invited to participate in the exhibition Objective Art at the Exhibition Hall of the General Directorate of Fine Arts. Curated by Angel Crespo. He was also invited to exhibit at the second edition of Nueva Generación in 1967, curated by Aguirre.
Since the mid-70s he practically did not participate in cultural activities. It must have coincided with his mother’s long and serious illness. She closed her studio, moved into her parents’ house, and predictably had to reduce her social life. After his mother’s death around 1985, he moved his residence permanently to Switzerland, where he continued to exhibit regularly.
* Homage exhibition to Edurne Gallery [Margarita de Lucas y Antonio Navascués]