Fernando Zóbel

FERNANDO ZÓBEL (Manila, Philippines, 1924 - Rome, Italy, 1984).
"The river XIV", 1978.
Oil on canvas.
Signed in the lower right corner. Signed, dated and titled on the back.
Measurements: 80 x 80 cm; 83 x 83 cm (frame).
In the year 1971 Fernando Zóbel initiated a prolific path whose indisputable protagonist was the river Júcar. His research lasted for a whole decade, becoming a recurring theme in his painting until shortly before his death. The artist would make out this natural landscape, in all its contexts and during all seasons, capturing his contemplative impressions through the use of photographs, watercolors and sketches, from which he would begin larger works. In this work, where Zóbel immortalized the river, he emphasizes the use of reflections, and the chromatic harmony based on a soft and vaporous range, complemented with linear elements, which form the dimensions and pictorial space. Starting from a material reality of the landscape towards an abstract conception of it, where disparate elements such as the fictitious and the real, or the pictorial and pictographic come together, thus forming a work of great lyrical content.
Historian, patron, university professor or collector, are some of the adjectives corresponding to the figure of Fernando Zóbel, one of the most outstanding painters of the Spanish twentieth century. 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 began to be 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 of them 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 gives rise to 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.