On returning from New York in 1990, Jesús Mari Lazkano began a new phase in his practice, which he called Tempus, that lasted until 1992. The works from this period engage with the history of architecture and engineering through a series of iconic constructions built in the second half of the nineteenth and the early twentieth century, but, as Lazkano writes in his notebooks, seen “through a pre-Renaissance sensibility.”

Mecánica de la arquitectura (The Mechanics of Architecture) belongs to that body of work. Here, the artist represents the Begoña urban elevator, an emblematic construction in Bilbao, whose structural uniqueness has made it a landmark of modern architecture. This public lift, designed by Rafael Fontán and built in 1943, is a recurring subject matter in Lazkano’s painting, as borne out in the series he made in 1984 called Ascensor de Begoña (Begoña Elevator) in which the imposing presence of the construction stands out in the abrupt topography. In this particular painting the artist focuses on the lift which, isolated from his surroundings, takes on a mysterious, decadent appearance. This de-contextualisation gives the piece a metaphysical and surrealist air, evincing the artist’s aspiration to the sublime and at once recalling some works by Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978) or René Magritte (1898-1967), in which silence and the absence of all human presence induces contemplative reflection in the beholder.

Like in Two Cities as One, also in the BBVA Collection, the painting is surrounded by a zinc frame on which the artist drew some metal elements that make us think of a treatise on industrial architecture. With the frame, Lazkano creates a window of sorts that invites the spectator to explore some of the characteristic industrial features of Bilbao, a city depicted in many of his works bathed in a nostalgic atmosphere.

Jesus Mari Lazkano: cuaderno de notas, published in 1992, includes a delicate sketch with a similar composition to this work and reflects the importance of drawing in the creative process of the artist, who kept countless notebooks that give us an insight into his sources of inspiration and the origin of his paintings.