The Focus-Abengoa Foundation announces the winner of the Prize for Best Doctoral Thesis on a Theme related to Seville 2014

January 9, 2015

• The artist and art historian Juan Fernández Lacomba has been announced as the winner of this Focus-Abengoa Foundation prize.
• The winning thesis entitled “Pintura de paisaje y plein-air en Andalucía: 1800-1936. Procesos culturales y corpus global” examines 19th century Seville as a major focal point of pictorial art in Andalusia.

Seville, 9 January, 2015.- The Prize for the Best Doctoral Thesis on a Theme Related to Seville was awarded to Juan Fernández Lacomba for his work “Pintura de paisaje y plein-air en Andalucía: 1800-1936. Procesos culturales y corpus global” (Landscape and open air painting in Andalusia: 1800-1936. Cultural processes and the corpus of work). The Prize, which has been presented by the Focus-Abengoa Foundation since 1983, is worth 3,000 euros and can include publication of the work, if the Foundation’s Board of Trustees believes it is appropriate, in order to publicise and disseminate the work as widely as possible.

The jury for the prize, chaired by Santiago Grisolía, trustee of the Focus-Abengoa Foundation and Executive Chairman of the Rey Jaime I Awards, noted that Fernández Lacomba’s study, directed by Juan Carlos Arañó Gisbert, is a theme of “enormous importance, in which Seville was a major focal point of pictorial art in Andalusia; the result of several decades of research”. It also pointed out that the thesis will be regarded “as an indispensable reference work and a starting point for future research in the future”. “Furthermore, it is a bibliographic exploration at an international level, which enables the author to correlate the trends in Andalusian landscape painting with the pictorial movements in the rest of the western world during the 19th century”.

“This work combines the scientific diligence of a university graduate with the sensitivity of an artist who understands how to accurately evaluate the aesthetic virtues of the material under consideration”.

Juan Fernández Lacomba is a painter and an art historian. He has studied at the University of Seville and has received various scholarships in Spain and abroad. In France he was awarded the scholarship from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs for foreign artists and studied as a post-graduate at the École Nationale Supériure des Beaux Arts while living in Paris for several years. He has given various solo and group exhibitions and his work features in prestigious public and private collections in Spain and abroad; he has received numerous awards, including the Luis Cernuda Painting Prize in 1985; he has written articles, publications and essays, and has curated important monographic exhibitions of Sevillian artists from the 19th and 20th centuries, as well as other wide-ranging exhibitions.

Appointed by the Board of Trustees of the Focus-Abengoa Foundation, the jury of the 31st edition was chaired by Santiago Grisolía, executive chairman of the Rey Jaime I Awards and a trustee of the Focus-Abengoa Foundation, and consisted of José Enrique Arraya, resident organist of the Focus-Abengoa Foundation and Seville Cathedral; Antonio-Miguel Bernal Rodríguez, professor of economic institutions and history at the University of Seville; José Domínguez Abascal, general technical secretary of Abengoa and professor of structures at the engineering college of the University of Seville; Consuelo Flecha García, professor of educational theory and history at the University of Seville; Carlos Alberto González Sánchez, professor of modern history at the University of Seville; Montserrat Martínez Vázquez, professor of English language and literature at the Universidad Pablo de Olavide; Mª Lourdes Munduate Jaca, professor of social psychology at the University of Seville; Javier Nó Sánchez, professor of information technology at the Universidad Loyola Andalucía; Pablo Palenzuela Chamorro, professor of social anthropology at the University of Seville; Víctor Pérez Escolano, professor of architectonic composition at the University of Seville; Alfonso Pleguezuelo Hernández, professor of history of art at the University of Seville; and Ramón Queiro Filgueira, professor in the department of urban and territorial planning at the University of Seville.

Focus-Abengoa Foundation

The Focus-Abengoa Foundation was created in 1982 as a result of the cultural work begun in 1972 by Abengoa with the publication of the works Temas Sevillanos (Themes of Seville) and Iconografía de Sevilla (Iconography of Seville). A collection of documents, books and engravings on the Kingdom of Seville and by Sevillian authors was created during the same period. This initial cultural work showed Abengoa’s directors the importance of the company’s involvement in activities that directly benefit society, beyond the firm’s core technology work, which led to the creation of the Seville Cultural Fund Foundation. The Hospital de los Venerables, a 17th century monument and the headquarters of the Focus-Abengoa Foundation in Seville, has housed the Diego Velázquez Research Centre, a leading institution for studying and disseminating the Baroque era and the Sevillian period of this universally renowned artist, since the acquisition of Velázquez’s “Santa Rufina” by the Foundation in 2007. The focus on this crucial era of the Golden Age is complemented with the legacy from Professor Alfonso E. Pérez Sánchez, bequeathed to the Foundation in 2011. It comprises his library, photo library, personal archive and art collection and is being catalogued to help create a library specialising in the art and culture of the Baroque period. http://focus.abengoa.es/

For more information:

Communication Department:

Patricia Malo de Molina Meléndez

Tel: +34 954 93 71 11

E-mail: communication@abengoa.com

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