Eusebio Sempere

(Onil, Alicante, 1923 – 1985)

Para el museo de Cuenca

1978

silkscreen on paper (13/100)

75.1 x 50.1 cm

Inv. no. 32356

BBVA Collection Spain


In a constant quest for a personal artistic style, over time Eusebio Sempere, who was also a member of the
, went from abstraction to geometric simplification, seeking to fuse dynamism and movement, volume and three-dimensionality. Starting out from the premises of
and
, he shifted towards
and Kinetic movements.

The line is the basic unit of his practice, which he employed to create spectacular effects and geometric volumes that appear to levitate in space. Through the use of colour and the line, generally in parallel, he managed to endow his works with movement and volume, sometimes generating a
-like effect.

The silkscreen would prove to be the medium most frequently used throughout his practice. He had picked up this particular technique in Paris around 1955 in the workshop of the Cuban artist Wilfredo Arcay (1925-1997), who was working for the Denise René gallery in prints for artists like Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) and Victor Vasarely (1906-1997), among others. Sempere recalled that learning the silkscreen technique was a slow, studied and meticulous process that allowed him to concentrate the motifs and figures to optimum effect and make them more evident. After his time in Paris, he started to produce silkscreens alongside his long-time collaborator Abel Martín.

For Sempere, light was of capital importance in his works given that, combined with colour, it is able to create optical illusions, and plays of lines and geometric forms that ultimately characterised the style of this great artist.