Nacho Criado Dies

Spanish artist Nacho Criado (Mengíbar, Jaén, 1943) has died. On November 4, 2009, he received the National Visual Arts Prize for "his central role in expanding the limits of creation of the artistic work, composing a vast poetic universe, and contributing to original aesthetic thought." His artistic trajectory was characterized by its connection to absolute modernity and its rejection of the art market. He studied architecture and the social sciences. As a proponent of minimalism, he created works with wood and iron. During the 1970s, he explored land art and conceptual art. Early in his career ¿ in the mid 1960s ¿ he became interested in formal reductionism, the behavior of the materials, and processual and spatial aspects. Since 1970, his work has been oriented toward the development and liberation of language. An admirer of Duchamp and Rothko, the artist presented numerous exhibitions at the MNCARS, CGAC, IVAM, EXPO de Sevilla, Hannover EXPO, Venice Biennale, and the Círculo de Bellas Artes de Madrid, as well as in cities such as Barcelona, Seville, Valladolid, Ljubljana, and Guadalajara (Mexico). He acknowledged Rothko, Manzoni, Beuys, Duchamp, and ZAJ as his inspirational teachers. Some of them were part of his best known work-project ¿ presented in 1977 at the Palacio de Cristal del Retiro ¿ entitled Ellos No Pueden Venir Esta Noche (They Cannot Come Tonight). This work is replete with references to Malevich, Mondrian, Klein, Dürer, Da Vinci, Phidias, Duchamp, and Becht. He also experimented with the moving image and authored two films: Cuerpo en Acción (Body in Action, 1974), and Extensiones (Extensions, 1975). He was awarded the Pablo Picasso Prize and the 2007 Mariano Benlliure Prize for his exhibition No Existe (It Does Not Exist) at the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, and also received the 2008 Fine Arts Gold Medal.