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Lot Essay
"Throughout his life, there is a theme which is repeated constantly: his dialogues with paintings. He would walk round all the museums in the world, carrying his notebooks, pencils, Chinese ink pens, and in more than one art gallery, he was called to order for standing for ages in front of the same picture while he wrote his notesK In these dialogues, Zóbel makes his own interpretations of other painters' work and give us a clue as to the theme addressed.
In these studies, he records the keys to what interests him about a painter at each given moment: sometimes it is the entire composition, other times it is a fragment or a detail, but in all of them he reflects the atmosphere of the picture under study, resolved abstractly but with direct, more or less figurative hints of the theme in which he is interested. But many are the authors who, for a variety of reasons, prompt him to engage in these dialoguesK.the perspectives and the geometric compositions; gesture and movement studied through the Renaissance and baroque - Barocci, Tintoretto, Caravaggio and so on.
He explores the problems and interpretations interesting him most in each painter, whether classical or modern. Indeed through his notebooks and drawings, it would be possible to undertake a practical review of the history of art. In various stages, or what we might even call pictorial cycles, we can see how Zóbel constantly submitted his own work to examination in an on-going dialogue with himself, moving forwards and backwards, or to quote the apt expression used by Francisco Calvo Serraller, advancing in circles."
Rafael P?rez Madero
Ranking alongside other major series of Fernando Zóbel's career, such as Las Saetas, La Serie Blanca and El J?car, the group of works forming the Di?logos con la Pintura or "Dialogues with Paintings" series center on Zóbel's engagement and 'conversations' with canonical artists from Western art history. An intellectual, Zóbel was often fascinated with the compositions of other preceding artists and the basis of their aesthetic structures, investigating the underlying pictorial draughts and grids, geometrical balances (such as those found within Neo-Classicism), or as observed by Rafael P?rez Madero, the linear forms of gesture and movement particularly within Renaissance art.
Zóbel named this series 'Di?logos' because he felt that he was engaging in a discourse with these master artists; a two-way exchange where he sought to be enlightened, but also contributed new, modern, abstract-oriented perspectives on their existing masterpieces. This conversational element was particularly important to Zóbel, as it extracted him from the solipsism often encountered by other modern artists. Apart from a dialogue with artistic forebears, Zóbel was engaged in a dialogue with himself and his work. Created during his mid-career perod of the early 1970s, Zóbel endeavored to return to the fundaments of practice and investigate the architectural quality of all art, including his own. This dialogue between the visible and the invisible, the idea of presence versus absence, and all the other universal binaries are contained within his Di/aalogos series of pictures.
In these studies, he records the keys to what interests him about a painter at each given moment: sometimes it is the entire composition, other times it is a fragment or a detail, but in all of them he reflects the atmosphere of the picture under study, resolved abstractly but with direct, more or less figurative hints of the theme in which he is interested. But many are the authors who, for a variety of reasons, prompt him to engage in these dialoguesK.the perspectives and the geometric compositions; gesture and movement studied through the Renaissance and baroque - Barocci, Tintoretto, Caravaggio and so on.
He explores the problems and interpretations interesting him most in each painter, whether classical or modern. Indeed through his notebooks and drawings, it would be possible to undertake a practical review of the history of art. In various stages, or what we might even call pictorial cycles, we can see how Zóbel constantly submitted his own work to examination in an on-going dialogue with himself, moving forwards and backwards, or to quote the apt expression used by Francisco Calvo Serraller, advancing in circles."
Rafael P?rez Madero
Ranking alongside other major series of Fernando Zóbel's career, such as Las Saetas, La Serie Blanca and El J?car, the group of works forming the Di?logos con la Pintura or "Dialogues with Paintings" series center on Zóbel's engagement and 'conversations' with canonical artists from Western art history. An intellectual, Zóbel was often fascinated with the compositions of other preceding artists and the basis of their aesthetic structures, investigating the underlying pictorial draughts and grids, geometrical balances (such as those found within Neo-Classicism), or as observed by Rafael P?rez Madero, the linear forms of gesture and movement particularly within Renaissance art.
Zóbel named this series 'Di?logos' because he felt that he was engaging in a discourse with these master artists; a two-way exchange where he sought to be enlightened, but also contributed new, modern, abstract-oriented perspectives on their existing masterpieces. This conversational element was particularly important to Zóbel, as it extracted him from the solipsism often encountered by other modern artists. Apart from a dialogue with artistic forebears, Zóbel was engaged in a dialogue with himself and his work. Created during his mid-career perod of the early 1970s, Zóbel endeavored to return to the fundaments of practice and investigate the architectural quality of all art, including his own. This dialogue between the visible and the invisible, the idea of presence versus absence, and all the other universal binaries are contained within his Di/aalogos series of pictures.