Michavila began his career in the fifties as part of the group Los Siete. He was also a founding member of the Parpalló (1956) and   groups and of the   movement (1967). He took part in the analytical trend of the sixties and seventies, basing his work on compositional rigour, the study of diagonals, and superimposed planes of colour. Later on he adopted a much more gestural aesthetic, within the ambit of abstract Informalismo.

This work shows the artist in a fresher vein, full of that compositional order and study of masses that we find in his work in the sixties, but also interested in the material he is working with and its tactile possibilities. Here we find scrapings in the paint, designed to create a faded effect, to drain light from the background, but also

 grattage 

a French term for a Surrealist technique consisting of achieving a visual effect through the suppression of layers of paint from the support. Used by Max Ernst as a derivative of

 frottage 

an art technique based on the reproduction of the texture of objects, achieved by rubbing a pencil on a sheet placed on top of the object whose texture one wishes to obtain.

, it was also used by Joan Miró and by practitioners of Informalismo, particularly Antoni Tàpies.

s which make the tones more dynamic and chromatic.

Michavila himself wrote that his earlier way of painting restricted him: “My mistake was to think that those crystalline structures were the picture; that is not true.” He thus explained how in his later work he had let himself be guided by intuition, by chance. Far from being concealed, the tools of his art are displayed, relishing every irregularity in the surface of the paint as a gift. The picture is filled with vitality through colour and offers an evocative representation of the Albufera freshwater lake near Valencia.

Extramuros is a very simple composition, but no less mysterious on that account.