Lot description
Pequeño homenaje a Stravinsky signed, dated, and inscribed "Pequeño homenaje a Igor Stravinski. Tres variantes en verde y ocre sobre un tema de Rembrandt. Su aguafuerte 'Le paysage a la tour" ca. 1650. Empezado en Madrid y terminado en Cuenca. el 2 de Agosto 1972" (lower left) oil on canvas 48" x 32" (122 cm x 81 cm) PROVENANCE Galería Theo, Madrid LITERATURE De la Torre, Alfonso and Rafael Pérez-Madero. Fernando Zóbel: Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings (1946 - 1984). Madrid: Fundación Azcona, 2022. Listed as "72-52 PEQUEÑO HOMENAJE A STRAVINSKY" with full-color illuustration and painting description on page 466. Bonet, Juan Manuel and Adolfo Cayon. Fernando Zóbel: the 1970s. A Homage to Rafael Perez-Madero. Published to accompany the exhibition of the same title. Makati City: Galeria Cayón, 2022. Fullcolor illustration on page 45 and painting description on pages 45 - 46. EXHIBITED Obra Cultural Monte de Piedad y Caja de Ahorros de Sevilla, Sala de Exposiciones El Monte, Fernando Zóbel (First Retrospective Exhibition), Seville, October 1983 León Gallery, Fernando Zóbel: the 1970s. A Homage to Rafael Perez- Madero, Makati City, 9 - 28 March 2022 "Little homage to Stravinsky” belongs to a small and select group of six paintings dedicated to five musicians who were important sources of inspiration for Fernando Zobel. The series began with a homage to Claudio Monteverdi in 1966 – a subject Zóbel returned to with the same dedication in 1972. Then we found that this tribute to Stravinsky followed in August of that same year. The piece dedicated to Mozart is dated 1975, while the works honoring Theobald Böhm (1976) and Marin Marais (1982) complete the series. What do we see in this Zobel masterpiece? First and foremost, a clear vertical emphasis. On a strikingly upright canvas, a series of green and ochre tones are arranged – seemingly at random yet forming a masterful balance of shapes and colors. The entire surface is gridded, almost like a kind of musical score. These tones are beautifully distributed from right to left and from bottom to top, with no obvious pattern – yet the result is sublime, functioning perfectly, as if we were listening to a twelve-tone composition by the great Igor Stravinsky. Secondly, we find a particularly interesting explanatory note: “Little homage to Igor Stravinsky. It has three variations of green, and ocher on a theme about Rembrandt. The etching “Le paysage a la tour” dated from 1650. It began in Madrid and finished in Cuenca on August 2nd of 1972.” Based on a small, apparently minor work by a major artist like Rembrandt, Zóbel created a superb composition which is also connected with Stravinsky's music. As if it were a negative, Zóbel's painting shows in its central part a vertical, whitish strip, in clear contrast to the vertical, solid, black mass of the tower in the centre of the composition. In addition, the black landscape of the engraving acquires, on the canvas, its natural colour of greens and ochres, recovering its natural colour; we are, therefore, before a landscape that Zóbel tries to apprehend under the severe order of the grid. The work, which is absolutely essential and possibly one of Fernando Zóbel's best composed and most thoughtout paintings, was in what was the artist's first exhibition shortly after his death.
