JuanHidalgo
Biography
Juan Hidalgo Codorniu was a Spanish composer, poet, performer, and visual artist. Initially interested in serial music, he was the first Spanish composer to participate in the festival Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt in 1957. Out of the friendship between Walter Marchetti and Ramón Barce, the Zaj collective, of which Hidalgo was a co-founder, was born in 1964. They began experimenting with expressive hints that did not rely solely on melody sequence, abandoning traditional music in favor of a multifaceted and versatile artistic language. He also took an interest in photography and collage, as in La barroca alegre y la barroca triste (1969) and Narciso (1990). In addition to Zaj, Hidalgo participated in Gustav Metzger’s Destruction in Art Symposium (DIAS) in London in 1966. He was part of several Fluxus festivals and co-created various performances as a member of the Fluxus movement, collaborating with John Cage in 1978. Hidalgo received several prizes and awards, including a Metalocus Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts (1989), one from the Círculo de Bellas Artes de Madrid (2001), and Spain’s National Award for Plastic Arts (2016). He has also taken part in the noteworthy Zaj retrospective at the Reina Sofía in Madrid (1996), the Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno in Las Palmas, and La Recova in Santa Cruz de Tenerife (1997), as well as a retrospective touring Mexico and Peru (2004).
