Attributed to Juan Navarro (1939) - Material landscape

Material Landscape (September 1997)

Style: lyrical abstraction · conceptual landscape
Pictorial School: Contemporary Catalan School (second half of the 20th century)

Technical sheet

Attributed to Juan NAVARRO BALDEWEG (1939)
Chronology: 1997 (dated and signed on the reverse)
Mixed technique on a rigid support
Measurements: 60 × 60 cm
Measurements with frame: 65 × 65 cm
Signature: Signed 'NAVARRO' on the front; text and signature 'Juan' on the back.
Condition: Very good
Frame: A quality frame, made of dark lacquered wood with clean lines and balanced proportions, featuring a contemporary character and perfectly integrated into the work.

2. Compositional and iconographic description

The work is articulated as a non-figurative landscape, constructed through layers of material, chromatic glazes, and graphic fragments that evoke territory, atmosphere, and depth without resorting to literal representation.

The square format reinforces the idea of an autonomous visual field, closed upon itself, where color and texture act as carriers of meaning.

The palette — earthy tones, muted greens, ochres, and grays — alludes to an essentialized nature, almost eroded by time.

The presence of graphic and collage elements introduces a reflective dimension, moving the work away from spontaneous gesture to place it within a space of pictorial thought, where the landscape becomes a metaphor for the passage of time and the transformation of perception.

3. Manuscript Text, Attribution, and Context

Transcription of the handwritten text in Catalan (reverse side)

The original spelling is respected; brackets indicate parts of doubtful or incomplete reading.

The liquid area
the diversity of colors
the spring of the landscape
before civilization
he/she transforms it / he/she destroys it

Looking is also
a way of expressing time

September 1997

Juan

This text does not act as an independent poem but as a poetic declaration of the creative process, fully coherent with the work. The language — ecological, phenomenological, and reflective — is characteristic of the Catalan artistic discourse of the 80s–90s, especially among authors linked to lyrical abstraction and conceptual landscape art.

The attribution to Juan Navarro is supported by a solid set of clues: matching signature on the obverse and reverse, precise date, autograph text in Catalan, mixed technique with a strong conceptual charge, and provenance from the contemporary Catalan circuit.

Although a closed institutional identification is not proposed, the work fully fits the profile of a Catalan artist active in the nineties, with his own training, discourse, and language, close — in sensitivity, not imitation — to environments related to Hernández Pijuan, Ràfols-Casamada, or late Catalan post-informalism.

It is an authentic, reflective, and defensible work, suitable for presentation with reasoned attribution, especially attractive to collectors interested in contemporary Catalan painting with intellectual and poetic content.