In the late-fifties, after graduating from the San Carlos School of Fine Arts in Valencia, Salvador Victoria moved to Paris. During his time there he acquainted himself with the happening art movements of the time, which had a decisive influence on his early output. On returning to Spain in the mid-sixties, his work evolved from informalist abstraction towards , in which the circle took on paramount importance. Throughout the seventies, as a result of his constant experimentation, his works gradually shifted towards a greater formal simplification, defined by the union of geometric forms in surprising colours. During the following decade, the sharply defined profiles of his earlier phase begin to blur and fade, blending in with the background of the canvas. Without forsaking the circle, a figure that would stay with him throughout his whole career, the artist’s paintings from the eighties and nineties marked a return to the gesture and of his period in Paris. That being said, the colours are more tempered, removed from the reds and blacks of his informalist compositions of the seventies.

Within Salvador Victoria’s overall production, a special mention is deserved for his graphic output. His interest in silkscreen printing can be traced back to his time in Paris, when he met some of the most important experts in printmaking. Silkscreen printing was a highly appreciated technique in post-war Paris largely thanks to the work of numerous workshops and the key role played by Galerie Denise René, which produced prints by the leading contemporary artists of the time.

Salvador Victoria made his first incursions in printmaking in 1967, after which he began to explore this discipline in parallel with his work in painting. Throughout his lifetime he collaborated with many different workshops and printmakers, with a particular mention for the silkscreen printer Ángel López and the artist and lithographer Dimitri Papagueorguiu (1928). Within this field, one could underscore his abundant graphic production from the seventies, a period in which Victoria experimented with geometric forms and colour, leading to a body of silkscreen prints that reveal his meticulous approach to printmaking.

In the early seventies, Salvador Victoria created a suite of works which he called superposiciones or ‘overlayerings’. His research into form and volume led him to experiment with overlapping inked acetates and poster board, on which he had previously made geometric incisions. The successive layers of poster board, together with the transparencies and the ink, produced a striking hypnotic effect.

The holdings of the BBVA Collection include an interesting group of works on paper from the early seventies, which reflect Victoria’s varied concerns in printmaking. These include two silkscreen prints from 1972, in which the artist created an evocative dance of concentric shapes that, visually and formally speaking, recall his overlayerings made with poster board. Victoria imbues his pieces with the three-dimensional visual quality and chiaroscuro effect of his collages through the use of a combination of different inks, in this case—a work created by the artist and printed at the Ibero Suiza workshops—within a monochrome range of greys.