Juan Cuenca interviewed by Diario de Córdoba
February 21, 2025
The artist, architect and founder of Equipo 57 presents his first solo exhibition in Seville, ‘Esencial’, a collection of paintings and sculptures that confirms the power of his artistic language and the heritage of abstract expression.
Sculptures in wood or stainless steel, paintings of vivid chromatism, pure volumes... The works by Juan Cuenca that make up his first solo exhibition in Seville are fascinating. They are also essential because here is the synthesis of a personal and rigorous way of approaching life and art. The exhibition can be seen every Thursday afternoon until 13 March at the headquarters of the Komun Foundation, at number 8, Calle Madre de Dios. The curator is the architect and teacher María Aguilar, who establishes harmonious and profound connections between the pieces and the rooms of the stately home that houses them.
Juan Cuenca's fidelity to abstract expression has not stopped since that summer of 1957 when, with Agustín Ibarrola, Ángel Duarte, José Duarte and Juan Serrano, he founded Equipo 57, a pioneering group that modernised and internationalised Spanish art, of which he is the only remaining member. For many Andalusians, Cuenca is also the architect who intervened in the Roman Bridge in Cordoba and its surroundings, the most publicly examined work of all those he carried out since he finished his studies in architecture at the Madrid School of Architecture in 1964 (the same year in which Equipo 57's activity ended) and until his retirement.