Although Murillo may execute a painting in a matter of hours, the process leading to its creation can take months; cut up and stitched together in different sections, folded, unfolded, left to assimilate studio debris, Murillo allows the environment of his studio to accumulate on his canvas.
‘My studio is a cradle of dust and dirt, of pollution,’ he told BOMB Magazine. ‘I don’t tidy up at the end of each production process. It’s all very much on purpose; it’s a continuous process, a machine of which I’m the catalyst. Things get moved around, I step on them, and they get contaminated. It’s not about leaving traces, it’s about letting things mature on their own.’ (Click the link below for full lot notes)
Despite the geometric abstraction of his forms, Chillida’s sculptures are rooted in the organic and elemental. Pure and unembellished, the rich, burnt umber surface recalls the serenity and warmth that rises from the sun-scorched earth of his Basque homeland, while the artist’s skillful manipulation of the material recalls the metalworking traditions practiced in the blacksmiths’ workshops of his native San Sebastián. This nostalgic relationship with the earth represents a significant connection between the artist’s country, his materials, and his sculptural practice
As Gaston Bachelard once wrote, ‘[Chillida] is familiar with the complex soul of iron. He knows that iron has a strange sensitivity’ (G. Bachelard, quoted in I. Busch, Eduardo Chillida, Architect of the Void: On the Synthesis of Architecture and Sculpture, Chillida 1948-1998, exh. cat., Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, 1998).
‘Richter has taken to flaying the painted skin of his canvases with a spatula in broad strokes or long, wavering stripes leaving behind abraded, shimmering surfaces that at their sheerest and most luminous look like the Aurora Borealis suspended above various red, orange, yellow, green, blue or violet planets.’ (R. Storr, Gerhard Richter: Forty Years of Painting, exh. cat., Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2002).
In the 1980s, Richter began to freely overlay his canvases with colourful streaks and drags of pigment using his signature squeegee. As Dietmar Elger has observed, ‘for Richter, the squeegee is the most important implement for integrating coincidence into his art. For years, he used it sparingly, but he came to appreciate how the structure of paint applied with a squeegee can never be completely controlled.’ (G. Richter quoted in D. Elger, Gerhard Richter: A Life in Painting, Chicago 2009).