At the time when he was painting this work, Salinas’ practice had just undergone a new shift, with a return to the order that had underpinned his work from the 1970s. Throughout the 1980s he opened up to greater expressive and gestural freedom, even though he had always stuck to an organising compositional plan using architectural elements and signs, which now gained renewed force. His palette however turns more subdued and atonal, although this was to be a temporary loss given that, in the 1990s, colour would once again take over his painting.

The vertical bands in this canvas are redolent of columns, of an organising geometry which comments on occupied and vacant space, on presence and absence, further enhanced through the use of black and white.

The work is structured by large white vertical areas, making the most of the chromatic nuances caused by the uneven application of paint against a dark background, echoing the work of painters like Mark Rothko (1903-1970). Salinas makes no attempt here to define exact limits, instead searching for something spontaneous and of great formal beauty, in line with his previous work. The apparent restraint of forms is full of nuances, making the most of the accidental, as in the case of the pseudo-

 dripping 

in art, dripping or drip painting is a technique of applying paint by pouring or dripping it directly on the canvas, generally lying horizontally on the ground. This technique is usually associated with action painting, a term coined by Harold Rosenberg in 1952 to describe the work of Jackson Pollock.

below the white figures.