Andrés Nagel’s work stands alone in the new Spanish figuration. Nagel is now 37; he does not belong to the most recent generation of artists, though his work shares the freedom of imagery they display in both painting and sculpture. But for a brief early period of abstraction he has always used the figure. His art is unconnected to the trends currently dominant in Spain, however, but elaborates on a gallery of characters whose natures oscillate between the tragic, the ironic, and the uninhibitedly humorous.

The exhibition again proved the richness and diversity of Nagel’s visual language, especially