Vítor Pomar is a multidirectional artist, whose production in the fields of photography, experimental cinema and video reveals an attitude of innovative broadening of traditional artistic fields. However, painting has always been the centre of his artistic operations, a privileged medium for the definition of a personal poetics that combines experimentalism and spirituality.

This work is part of a series produced between 1975 and 1983. The composition is marked by Gesturalism, by the signs of an action that manifests itself in the stains of paint which, sometimes compact and overlapping, sometimes distended in successive and illusory planes, give the painting a strong expressive charge. The presence of movement is reinforced by the elimination of colour, in contrasting and dynamic timbre variations of blacks, whites and greys. Exuberant in scale and in the impact it makes on the observer, it nevertheless refers to an idea of stripping (of colour, of form), which can be related to the attempt to liberate the psyche in the process of seeking union between the material and spiritual worlds.

Alongside his plastic production, Vítor Pomar has developed a theoretical production on the relationships between the creative act, aesthetic experience, and the human condition. In 1980, in connection with the cycle of paintings in which this work is included, he wrote a - Recipe for making a black and white painting
, an excerpt of which is transcribed: « Walk around the canvas lying on the floor: It is white and knows neither up nor down. When you discover a weak (or inviting?) spot: Use a brush lwith (black) paint; The attack (or caress) will leave it's mark and be visible. Mix up the clues. Trick chance. Destroy everything. Listen to the light. When everything has been broken everything will holds together: unbearable gratification. Turn away. Oppression, the other side of seduction? »

JB