Francisco Sobrino

This monograph sheds light on the extreme coherence of his approach and the diversity of his work, and measures his contribution to the history of art of his time.

This publication benefits from a long essay by the Spanish critic Alfonso de la Torre and the expert gaze of the curator and art historian Matthieu Poirier.

Born in Guadalajara, Spain, Francisco Sobrino (1932-2014) began his painting and sculpture studies at the School of Arts and Crafts in Madrid between 1946 and 1948. He moved to Argentina in 1949 and studied at the School of Fine Arts of Buenos Aires between 1950 and 1957.

During this period, he met many artists and writers belonging to the Arte Concreto group. He then turns to geometric abstraction. At the School of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires, he also met Hugo Demarco, Julio Le Parc and Horacio Garcia Rossi. In 1959, Sobrino moved to Paris with Le Parc and co-founded the Visual Art Research Group (GRAV). In 1960, he began to make reliefs and three-dimensional constructions from tinted transparent plastic.

These works were the first of his explorations on the juxtaposition and the superposition between the spectator and the work of art. In 1965, his work was included in the exhibition "Responsive Eye" at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. In 2008, a Francisco Sobrino museum was founded in Guadalajara, Spain. From 2008 to 2012, he produced numerous exhibitions, monumental works and architectural integrations in Spain and France.