Lot description
Tomás II signed (lower left and verso), dated 1978 and inscribed "TOMAS II, 78-61" (verso) oil on canvas 31 1/2" x 31 1/2" (80 cm x 80 cm) LITERATURE: De la Torre, Alfonso and Rafael Pérez-Madero. Fernando Zóbel: Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings (1946 - 1984). Madrid: Fundación Azcona, 2022. Listed as "nº 78-61" with full-color illustration on page 579 and painting description on page 578. Zobel’s Serie Blanca is perhaps the zenith of his career. After a series of experimentations with colors, he has now turned to white and its endlessly lyrical possibilities. “It is not a matter of abandoning color to paint in black and white, it is a matter of gradually reducing the color until there is nothing left but warm grays and cold grays,” Rafael Pérez-Madero writes about Serie Blanca. Indeed, Serie Blanca, if possible, pushes his oeuvre to its extreme, becoming more self-sufficient in its bareness. Its lyricism is laid bare, harmony, tranquility, and order evident despite the apparent emptiness of the piece. As such, Tomás II belongs to such a series, echoing what his biographer Angeles Villalba Salvador describes as “characterized by infinitely degraded whites, which distribute spaces and volumes and seem to lose themselves on the edges of the canvas.” With precise and painstaking vision, Zobel pushes white to its absolute limits, creating a unique brand of minimalism that transcends into pure nonobjectivism that is both intricate and sublime. “This time it is not a theme that is worked to exhaustion, as in previous cycles. The theme is even broader, using more subjects to be based on, landscapes, still lifes, gestures, movements, lights, contrasts, etc., although this is only an anecdote of which there is hardly any trace left,” Pérez Madero adds. “This time, it is a matter of achieving the maximum with the minimum of resources. ”
