Lot description
Fernando Zóbel (1924 - 1984) Gestos: The Boinas II (78 - 74) signed (lower left and verso) 1978 oil on canvas 25” x 30” (64 cm x 76 cm) PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF A DISTINGUISHED LADY Leon Gallery wishes to thank Doña Georgina Padilla Zóbel for graciously confirming the authenticity of this lot Fernando Zóbel lived within the realms of his artistry. As he pointed out: “I think that painters paint the world they live in. My world has to do with the history of art. It would be absurd for me to attempt social realism. I’m the sort of person who lives in museums or at home surrounded by books and paintings.” After his baroque colorism of the 1950s and the Serie Negra of the early 1960s, Zóbel progressed into reductive abstraction which became the foundation of his aesthetics. Art critic Leonidas Benesa once wrote: “What the artist presents for contemplation is the result of an inner experience, be the subject the landscape in nature, or in a painting.” He traversed into pure non-objectivism and minimal color that defined his work in the mid-1960s. The gestural lines dissipate into atmospheric tonalities that are ambiguous yet intricate and sublime. This piece by Zobel demonstrates his minimalist orientation with an ascetic elegance. Purita Kalaw Ledesma told Cid Reyes in 1973: “The delicacy of style, the balance of the restraint, and the things unsaid... these things I find in Zobel’s art, and it moves me.”
