José Manuel Broto’s earliest steps as an artist are grounded in the aesthetic principles championed by the French group as well as in his role in founding Trama, a multidisciplinary collective that defended what was called

 Pintura-pintura 

, or pure painting, advocating the act of painting in opposition to the conceptual trend in vogue in Catalonia at the time and also as an alternative to the movement which was gaining force in the art world. Broto’s response was the development of a minimalist visual idiom pursuing a combination of chromatic forms eschewing any avowed meaning.

After this period of

 Pintura-pintura 

, in the 1980s Broto evolved towards a brand of abstraction lending a major role to colour, coupled with abstract forms or references to geometric elements. His way of interpreting figures always found a middle ground between Figuration and Abstraction materialised in a gestural vernacular reminiscent of early , featuring elements like stairs, grilles, fountains... —elements also present in the works of Joan Miró (1893-1983) and Antoni Tàpies (1923-2012)— invariably floating against a background, thus conferring an aura of mystery and mysticism. Colour and brushwork here are of primary importance. The nervous gesture, the spontaneous brushstroke, the stains and drips, the use of scribbling reminiscent of calligraphic writing, are all reminders of his connection with .

The storm in the title of this work announces a connection with the Northern European tradition of the sublime, a term coined in the Romantic period. Passionately, almost feverishly, Broto renders the feeling which the power of Nature provokes in him through the

 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.

s plattered across the canvas, veiling or obscuring the iconic-like figures.

Though instrumental in reinforcing the violence and the disquieting sensation emanating from the composition, the palette of greys and blues used here contrasts strongly with the habitual warmth of other works by this artist in the BBVA Collection.