Emilio Ortiz

(Mexico City, 1936 – 1988)

Sequenza con personaje femenino (Sequenza with Female Character)

1980

oil on canvas

85 x 110 cm

Inv. no. CCB414

BBVA Collection Mexico



The music lover and mathematician Emilio Ortiz perhaps drew his inspiration for this sequenza from the spiral shape of the shells of some molluscs, like the nautilus, providing the painting with a medieval look in its parchment-like support; the velvety bonnet refers to the golden section, adding a humorous note in the profusion of cats. The word sequenza (sequence) is synonymous with order, succession or series. In science, the Fibonacci sequence, described in the thirteenth century by the Italian mathematician Leonardo de Pisa, also known as Fibonacci, proposed a golden ratio spiral generated by drawing circular arcs following a certain mathematical pattern. This device is present in countless biological configurations: tree branches, artichoke flowers, sunflowers, pine cones. The Fibonacci sequence had an effect on the new music structures of musicians like the Hungarian composer Béla Bartók or the French composer Olivier Messiaen, as well as in Luciano Berio’s Sequenza series of compositions.

This striking Madonna, shrouded in silence and surrounded by cats arranged following a strict exponential order, is part of a series of similar works, in which Emilio Ortiz worked with the unhurried assurance of a miniaturist.