Fernando Zóbel

FERNANDO ZÓBEL (Manila, Philippines, 1924 - Rome, Italy, 1984).
"Seville, winter at four o'clock in the afternoon", 1968.
Oil on canvas.
Signed, titled on the back.
Work referenced in : DE LA TORRE, Alfonso (Director). In collaboration with PÉREZ-MADERO Rafael. Catalog Raisonné of Paintings of Fernando Zóbel. Madrid-Manila: Azcona Foundation, Juan March Foundation, Ayala Foundation and Heirs of Fernando Zóbel, 2023 Ref. 78-76, Page 585.
Exhibited in Palma de Mallorca, Pelaires Gallery, 1969.
Measurements: 80 x 100 cm; 83 x 103 cm (frame).

The subtlety of the transit between the architectural and the landscape, between memory and reality, is manifested in many of Fernando Zóbel's mature works, and in this painting of 1969 it reaches high quotas of genius. A soft, almost vaporous range, complemented with linear elements that form an architectural structure (a corridor, a door) dilutes the material in a field of spiritual light. The use of reflections dialogues with the chromatic harmony (pure play of ochre and earth tones), bringing together apparently irreconcilable realities: matter and spirit, architecture and landscape, line and atmosphere, painting and pictography. The result is a work of great lyrical content. Zóbel dedicated an extensive pictorial series to the city and landscape of Seville, in which the artist expressed the accumulation of sensations that the local light brought him in winter.

Historian, patron of the arts, university professor and collector are some of the adjectives corresponding to the figure of Fernando Zóbel, one of the most outstanding painters of the 20th century in Spain. The formation and cultivation of his personality, never ceases to develop, highlighting his love for books. He studied Medicine in the Philippines and graduated in Philosophy and Arts at Harvard University in the United States, being at this time when he became interested and involved with the pictorial world influenced by the Boston School, whose palette showed almost pure colors framed by a very marked drawing. Thus, in 1951 he took up the chair of Fine Arts at the Ateneo de Manila. Zóbel's evolution and need to develop a personal artistic language led him to explore the world of abstraction influenced by Rothko, or the expressionism of Pollock or de Kooning, working on very valid non-figurative proposals. To this, it is necessary to add the great influence and interest he felt towards oriental cultures, increasing this eagerness with his participation in a Chinese archaeological excavation discovered in the Philippine peninsula of Calatagan. As it was said, Zóbel's work drinks from the East, so much so that oriental calligraphy is the one that favors the presence of sinuous lines of great elegance, which can be appreciated in the work that concerns us, in which the meticulous and thoughtful previous work can be appreciated. And there is nothing left to chance in his apparently spontaneous painting, all contain a period of reflection and previous execution, because, as he said: "my process is the process of sketch, drawing, sketch and painting", a planning that results in perfect scenographies formed by movement, lines, speed, space and light. His work is represented in important museums such as the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Español in Valladolid, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, the Museo de Bellas Artes in Bilbao, the Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York, the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha (Nebraska), the Hispanic Society of America, as well as in collections such as Chase Manhattan Bank, the AENA Art Collection of Contemporary Art in Madrid, and the Banco Urquijo in Barcelona.