His mother's family were practicing Catholics, while his father's had close links to the progressive left wing and worked in the UGT trade union's carpentry division.

[6] Genovés did not find inspiration in the too-accommodating art encouraged in the faculty, nor in the artistic proposals made by others such as El Paso,[4] a vanguard collective that had become better known in post-war Spain because its abstract language did not appear to challenge Franco's dictatorship.

He uses a language that is strongly influenced by photography and film, reminiscent of North American pop art, with techniques involving aerosols, printing and stencils, to produce images that look as though they have been created by machine; thus, the artistic message runs through the entire work, not just in the mark of the brush.

[10] He upends into his work that entire aesthetic of fear and repression, giving us painting that is easy to access, with socially committed issues, worlds away from the fashionable informalism of the time.

Juan GenovésHis constant social commitment to portray those who were fighting Franco's dictatorship meant that he kept track of the historic development and consequences of the repression during the regime's second phase (1959–1975).

[9] Following his time with the Hondo group, the proponents of an expressionist[11] neofigurativism which also borrowed procedures more associated with informalism,[12] and after an extensive search for expression, he found his own style, becoming a crucial artist in the post-war Spanish vanguard.

In this initial stage,[13] the human shapes in his work begin to multiply and shrink, creating multitudes, sets of individuals who tell stories of terror, of flight, of war.

[17] The individuals, now bigger and treated in a hyperrealist manner, are superimposed on white backgrounds, figures with spot colours, whose purpose is direct communication, devoid of flourishes.

[10] One of the painter's most popular pictures belongs to this period, El Abrazo [The Hug] (1976),[18] which was used for a poster that the anti-Franco platform, the Democratic Board had commissioned him to make clandestinely.

[19] In 2003 the painter was asked to adapt the work to create a bronze monument in tribute to the lawyers murdered on Madrid's Atocha Street, which can be seen today in Antón Martín Square.

A sign of the continued dialogue between the work of Genovés and the historical events in the country is the Paisajes Urbanos [Urban Landscapes] series that he created in the Eighties.

The works in this series are mostly empty of human life; they show deserted, nocturnal cities to convey the desolation and anguish felt across the country as a result of the new atmosphere.

[12] The painter furnishes these nearly empty streets and solitary buildings with a colour palate of greys, blues and ochres, giving greater dramatism to the fear that had returned to permeate everything.

The nineties[22] see a period of synthesis in the work of Genovés,[12] with the reappearance of crowds, this time made up of small figures always painted in blacks and greys which the light causes to reflect elongated shadows, creating the illusion of superimposition[5] over wide empty white spaces.

Sometimes, the intense colour shapes might remind one of the shock wave of an explosion, repelling the figures; at other times, however, they are attractive points of light or lines indicating direction.

[25] Now the individuals not only flee repression during a march, but congregate in shopping malls, on beaches, are held back by a huge frontier wall or are just disorientated and don't know where they are coming from or where they are going.

[25] An example of this is Linde [Boundary],[24] which shows a canvas divided by an abrupt red line, where the crowd represents an uncomfortable tension in its attraction towards that strip, but at the same time submissively obeys and does not cross.

[26] In this final period, Genovés continued to make a contribution to the debate on the reality surrounding him, bringing his own perspective, that as spectators immersed in the crowd it is difficult to discern.

[27] His work's artistic, political and social content is transmitted by his investigation of pictorial language, the image's static movement, visual rhythm and the use of contrast between the backdrop and the figure.