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Lot Essay
Executed in 1962, this large and imposing triptych representing a sea of humanity is a powerful expression of both the homogenous and organic nature of the human mob and of the existential plight of modern man.
Using the traditionally religious format of the triptych, Saura depicts a crowded mass of figures seemingly dominated and oppressed by a dramatic spatial void that stretches across the top of the painting. Condensed by the artist's flamboyant use of interconnected gestural splashes of paint into a conglomeration of jostling forms, this vigorous but collective mass of forms generates a strong sense of fear, anxiety and unrest.
"I have attempted to unite multiple approximations of bodiless faces to ... coordinate sets of antiforms in organic associations as if they were obeying.... needs for union and repulsion which are capable of generating a sensation of continuity," Saura has remarked about Foule. "Continuity and expansion," he continued, "bursting the limits, structural holes, absence of centralization, consideration of the pictorial surface as a two-dimensional entity predestined to receive systematic and free occupation.... I wanted.... to reflect the clamour of the human masses attracted like moths to a lantern by a cult, a protest, a type of fanaticsm, indignation or plea...." (Antonio Saura cited in exh. cat., Lugano, Museo d'Arte Moderna, Antonio Saura, Lugano 1994, p. 134)
Executed in the deliberately harsh tones of brown, black, white and grey that have characterised Saura's work ever since 1956 when the repression and imprisonment of many of his friends under the Franco regime prompted the artist to adopt such stark colours, the gloomy and turbulent sea of expressive brushstrokes in the present work depicts an agitated humanity as a collective victim of its existential condition. Seeming fearful of "the vertigo of the void", like a herd awaiting slaughter this convoluted mass, denies the notion of the individual in a way that instills a strong sense of alienation in the lone viewer. Confronted by a wall of indistinct faces that stretches to the horizon over three large panels Saura's own pervasive sense of unease is convincingly transmitted to the viewer by this large and impressive work.
Using the traditionally religious format of the triptych, Saura depicts a crowded mass of figures seemingly dominated and oppressed by a dramatic spatial void that stretches across the top of the painting. Condensed by the artist's flamboyant use of interconnected gestural splashes of paint into a conglomeration of jostling forms, this vigorous but collective mass of forms generates a strong sense of fear, anxiety and unrest.
"I have attempted to unite multiple approximations of bodiless faces to ... coordinate sets of antiforms in organic associations as if they were obeying.... needs for union and repulsion which are capable of generating a sensation of continuity," Saura has remarked about Foule. "Continuity and expansion," he continued, "bursting the limits, structural holes, absence of centralization, consideration of the pictorial surface as a two-dimensional entity predestined to receive systematic and free occupation.... I wanted.... to reflect the clamour of the human masses attracted like moths to a lantern by a cult, a protest, a type of fanaticsm, indignation or plea...." (Antonio Saura cited in exh. cat., Lugano, Museo d'Arte Moderna, Antonio Saura, Lugano 1994, p. 134)
Executed in the deliberately harsh tones of brown, black, white and grey that have characterised Saura's work ever since 1956 when the repression and imprisonment of many of his friends under the Franco regime prompted the artist to adopt such stark colours, the gloomy and turbulent sea of expressive brushstrokes in the present work depicts an agitated humanity as a collective victim of its existential condition. Seeming fearful of "the vertigo of the void", like a herd awaiting slaughter this convoluted mass, denies the notion of the individual in a way that instills a strong sense of alienation in the lone viewer. Confronted by a wall of indistinct faces that stretches to the horizon over three large panels Saura's own pervasive sense of unease is convincingly transmitted to the viewer by this large and impressive work.