In 1991, five years after graduating from the Escuela de Bellas Artes (School of Fine Arts) in his native Buenos Aires, Alejandro Corujeira travelled to Madrid where he continues to reside and work to this day. Corujeira’s earliest introduction to the artistic circuit began in the Spanish capital, where he gained increasing recognition as a unique artist working within the field of postmodern abstraction. A little over a decade after arriving in Madrid, the artist had a number of important solo exhibitions including at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid in 2002, and at the Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno (IVAM), Valencia in 2006. Other Spanish venues exhibiting works by Corujeira include the Museo Municipal de Madrid, and the Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de España, Madrid, amongst others.
Working with a diverse range of media, Corujeira’s earliest pieces incorporate organic forms in a minimalist style under the greater framework of abstraction. The artist has consistently exhibited a commitment to wavering lines, oblong shapes, and undulating forms, all the while depicting these across a wide spectrum of chromatic palettes. The use of the words “vibrant,” “energetic,” “rhythmic,” and “palpitating,” have all been employed by critics to describe Corujeira’s work, and they all do successfully capture a common element—a sense of movement—that remains a constant in the aesthetic trajectory of the artist’s various series throughout his oeuvre.
Corujeira’s most recent work, incorporates acrylic, watercolor, and graphite circular and elliptical shapes rendered in a limited-ranged palette. These spherical-based shapes of various forms and sizes appear to drift and float across the surface of the canvas, sometimes overlapping, other times barely touching. These molecular, even cellular-seeming orbs are rendered through an ascetic use of color: they are comprised of either different tonalities or hues of the same palette at the very least, or through a restrained use of the three primary colors at the very most. Combined with Corujeira’s use of barely discernible traces of white and black outlines, as well as his unique employment of negative space, this chromatic restraint results in a playful depiction of forms that appear to take on a sense of slow, if gradual, movement. These works entice the viewer’s eye and almost beg to be gazed at over a duration of time.
The artist was a recipient of the Josef and Annie Albers Foundation Residency in 2004, and his work has been exhibited in numerous galleries, including: various venues of Marlborough Gallery; Alejandra von Hartz Gallery, Miami; Van Riel Gallery, Buenos Aires; Juan Martín Gallery, Mexico City; and Elite Fine Art Gallery, Miami, amongst others.
Alejandro Corujeira’s work can be found in a number of prestigious public and private collections, including: the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection, New York; the Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art, Austin; the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas Sofía Ímber; the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Panamá; the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; and the Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno (IVAM), Valencia.
