José Guerrero

(Granada, 1914 – Barcelona, 1991)

Azul y negro

1975

silkscreen on paper (35/75)

65 x 50,6 cm

Inv. no. 33133

BBVA Collection Spain



Guerrero’s contact with American
during his time in New York in the 1950s pushed him towards abstraction. From that moment onwards, he would engage in a highly chromatically charged painting in which colours and brushwork played a major role. Another key element behind his shift from figuration to abstraction was the experimentation he began during this period in the field of graphic arts at
run by Stanley William Hayter (1901-1988). From then on, and until the end of his life, printing and engraving were an essential part of his practice, gaining particular importance in the 1970s and 80s, a time when he created several portfolios and works that evince the evolution of the painter’s style.

His collaboration with Grupo Quince was particularly germane in this field, contributing to many of its most significant joint projects with works including the suite Colour in Poetry (1975) and the lithograph Blue and Black, of which the BBVA Collection owns the piece in hand (35/75). Published in 1975, compositionally speaking it remits to other works by the artist, such as Black Lateral (1974), Blues Unfolding (1975), Blue Sector (1977) and Untitled (1977), sharing with them a similar structure: a powerful wide band runs longitudinally down the right side from top to bottom, paired with a second body that takes the form of a wide area of flat colours, occasionally crossed by strokes of white or black lines. The slightly ovoid black or white blotch which seems to gravitate over this surface is a signature feature in Guerrero’s visual language and closely related with the heads of his iconic phosphorescent works.

In this lithograph, Guerrero uses exclusively black and blue, two significant tones in his palette sourced from certain personal life events, more specifically with childhood memories. Black resonates with the periods of mourning his family lived through after the deaths of his father and brother, while the blue recalls memories of the bluing rags his mother used to whiten clothes.