Fernando Zobel

Acquired directly from the artist
This work is accompanied with a statement of authenticity from Don Rafael Pérez-Madero

This work is in good condition overall. The canvas is clear and taut. There is also indication of a repaired tear on the reverse of the canvas (the patch is located on the lower left). However this is not visible when viewed from the front. Under ultraviolet light inspection, a general retouching was done throughout the painting, mainly on the margins and corners of the painting. There is a network of craquelures throughout the painting surface, but the paint layers and brushstrokes are well-preserved and stable. Framed.
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“Art lives from tension and dies from distractions.”

FERNANDO ZOBEL CITED IN ZÓBEL, MUSEO NACIONAL CENTRO DE ARTE REINA SOFIA, EDICIONES ALDEASA, CUENCA, 2003, P. 261.   

1953 was an important year for Zobel as that was when he was awarded first prize by the Art Association of the Philippines for Carroza. It also heralded his first experimentations with abstract art. He destroyed most of them, but the few surviving ones are valuable revelations to Zobel’s processes. The present work, Cantera I, was dated both 1953 and 1956, were executed during the Manila years. It was not unusual for Zobel to paint several canvases as once and to leave some of them unfinished until he was ready to work on them again. The final date, 1956, is significant, as it indicates that the painting was completed after Zobel’s eye-opening encounter with the works of Mark Rothko at his exhibition in 1955.

Colour, as Zobel saw in Rothko, was an important element. He deemed it so vital that he even favoured painting in the early morning, when the sunlight is whitest throughout his artistic career (Peter Soriano, Zobel, Reina Sofia, page 258). While Zobel never emulated Rothko in imageries, his colours had given him a multilayered visual experience and on psychological and emotional level, it convinced him of the importance of graphic elements. His lifelong fascination with Chinese calligraphy, which later hung on the wall of his studios in Cuenca, Seville and Madrid, perhaps also influenced Zobel to focus on the gestural aspect of abstract art. Regardless, lines became the core matter of Zobel’s first mature abstract works. He once said, “The theme is movement expressed metaphorically by the use of line. The movement of leaves, of trees, of people; movement observed, felt, never imitated but, I hope, translated.” (Rafael Pérez-Madero, Zóbel. La Serie Blanca, Ediciones Rayuela, Madrid, 1978.)

Cantera I depicts a picture plane divided into several overlapping rectangular areas. On the foreground, a network of long fine yellow lines form a delicate trellis of linear and curved lines against a delicate and luminous blue and white background. From its minimalist composition and tension and movement between the linear elements, it bears a strong resemblance to Saeta series and may very well be its missing link and precursor. Commenting about Cantera I, Don Rafael Pérez-Madero wrote (translated),

“I would call them in any case ‘pre-Saetas’. The difference, technically, is little. But if we observe from here, we can start looking at his paintings, how the lines purify and attract more attention, until it becomes clear, that each time with more clarity the bareness of the stroke, the graphics (the hand and the movement of Zobel on the canvas), the movement of the painting via the lines and at the end the very absence of the background colour. For me the most important moment of ‘Las Saetas’, is when the absence of colour converts into only black lines on white canvas. 

…with this painting and in this period you can start to see the seeds and the future of his path towards abstraction. For me, starting from this moment and the following ‘Saetas’, and also the black and white works from the 1970’s, are possibly, the more pure abstract periods of the paintings of Fernando Zobel.  ‘La Cantera’ of the 1950’s is only the title of two or three paintings. You can totally consider it as a series like ‘Las Saetas’ which consists of tens of paintings based on the same concept and which forms an important body within the works of Zobel, like what occurs much later with the Blanca, La Vista, El Jucar, etc. series in which there usually is a unity in theme or concept and an important number of paintings which form the series.  ‘La Cantera’ is a good start of the works that were to come, however Zobel did not know, at that moment, that ‘Las Saetas’ will be derived from this piece.”