Salvador Victoria

(Rubielos de Mora, Teruel, 1928- Alcalá de Henares, Madrid, 1994)

Untitled

1972

silkscreen on paper (A. P.)

70 x 50 cm

Inv. no. 31503

BBVA Collection Spain


Salvador Victoria is a key figure in the renewal of the visual arts in Spain in the twentieth century. His painting evolved from an informalist language in the fifties—coinciding with his time in Paris and his discovery of
and
—towards
in pure colours and forms, with the circle as the main motif in his compositions. These features would visually and conceptually mark his work in the seventies. After a period of tireless experimentation, in the eighties he recovered the free-flowing, vibrant brushwork of his early practice. Without ever abandoning the circle, his compositions from this period are sustained on a more leisurely rhythm than the works from his period in Paris and would be a point of inflection in his long process of research into the form, colour and matter, the elements which Victoria used to transcend the boundaries of the purely visual.

In 1967 Salvador Victoria began to delve into the world of printmaking which would become, from that moment onwards and until the end of his life, a core part of his artistic production. Throughout his life he worked with many different workshops and printmakers, creating a group of works that evolve in parallel to his painting and readily evince his eagerness to experiment. During the seventies he worked constantly in the field of printmaking, producing a body of work that would be characterized by highly disciplined geometrical compositions and the use of striking colours which give the works a marked rhythm. This print, published by the artist and printed at the Ibero-Suiza workshop, is a further step on his path towards greater simplicity, a goal he pursued throughout his career. The print showcases the formal universe Victoria introduced into his work at this time and which he would continue to define throughout the whole decade: pure forms, with a predominance of the circle, cross through a space which is delimited by a horizon line. This novel plane, taking his work to a new dimension, brings to mind his metaphysical worlds from the mid-seventies, in which a large sphere seems to magically emerge from the lower part.