Andres Nagel

Rizzoli International Publications, 1992. Hard cover. Very Good/Very Good. In Very Good+ condition with Very Good+ Dustjacket. In his imaginative sculptures, reliefs and collages, Spanish Basque artist Andres Nagel (b. 1947) fuses social satire, surreal fantasy, Goya-esque irony, religious and baroque imagery, and allusons to Old Masters. In Suicide , a fragmented flat figure whose head is an arrow plunges from a window. The couple frantically jitterbugging in Mary McDonald Doesn't Control Her Legs suggests the urban graffiti of Jean Dubuffet. In Mickey Mouse , Mickey embraces Minnie in a suspended cloth that forms a secular icon. This lavishly illustrated monograph weds some 200 color plates to art critic Lucie-Smith's observant essay on a chameleon artist who uses different visual languages to suit the task at hand. Nagel's still lifes, violent in atmosphere, churn with latent meanings. His speculative, hermetic artworks animate jazz musicians, astronauts walking in space, leaping monkeys and eerie headless torsos with lamps for eyes. Andrés Nagel Tejada ( San Sebastián , 15 of August of 1947 ) is a painter, sculptor and engraver Spanish , one of the artists Basques current most internationally.With eclectic tastes, very traveler and with a long history of exhibitions, his work in painting, sculpture and engraving can be labeled as postmodern figuration , framed in the reaction that opposed, in the 60s and 70s, the abstract and informalist way then predominant. Nagel mostly addresses social issues with sarcasm and irreverence, in a style that at times recalls the New Madrid figuration and that adopts influences from pop art (color and urban themes), surrealism (shocking and humorous approaches) and arte povera (use of humble materials and waste).