Eusebio Sempere was one of the main practitioners of and Op and Kinetic art in Spain. His uniquely beautiful work is the outcome of a continual striving towards geometric simplification, movement and optical illusion.

Sempere worked across a whole range of media including drawing, watercolour, oil painting, , silk-screen and lithography, as well as sculpture, which he used to explore his ongoing research into light, movement and geometry of volumes in three dimensions.

When transformed into matter, the fine, accurate lines we see in his painting and printmaking seem to gravitate, apparently weightless, in the air.

The geometric form is simplified to the utmost: a number of cylindrical or quadrangular rods arranged in parallel or perpendicularly are connected along a central axis that allows them to move independently. The simplicity and the effectiveness of the structure open up infinite variations in terms of form, the light it irradiates and the movement, which changes depending on the position of the spectator and produces a

 moiré 

the moiré effect or moiré pattern is a visual effect generated by overlaying two grids of lines at an angle or when the grids have slightly different mesh sizes. The origin of the expression comes from a type of silk or fabric with a rippled, “watered” effect.

effect.

In the 1970s, Sempere began his series Esculturas cromadas colgantes, to which this untitled column from 1973 belongs. A chrome-plated circular rod acts as the central axis for 80 Z-shaped rods with a quadrangular cross-section, alternated with nuts to create a space between the rods. The countless organised or chaotic arrangements hold out manifold formal possibilities.

The fact that the work is suspended in the air, held exclusively from the top of the central axis, further enhances the sense of levity. Indeed, Sempere did not view his work as sculpture per se as it is the actual material itself, industrial metal rods, that give the piece its sculptural volume.