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. 3339

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. In the seventies he developed a kind of composition he called superposiciones, or ‘overlayerings’: works in which he built up layers of poster board and acetate, which he used to explore volume and light. He then transferred this same concept of layering to printmaking, printing different inks one on top of another, a technique with which he achieved interesting plastic and optical effects. This work, dating from 1972, is an interesting example of his prints made through layering. As one can observe in the circular part in the centre of the composition, by printing with one ink on top of another he creates a subtle glaze that allows one to glimpse the form beneath. The combination of all the layers of paint gives rise to a series of concentric forms that lend a sense of depth and volume that appears to project the circumferences into the space of the spectator.