Artworks
Paisagem de Espanha [Landscape of Spain]
painting
Date
1928
Technique
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
55,5 x 71 cm
Along with a more modernist work, expressed in the visual treatment of his inhabited landscapes with their houses of unstable architecture, Alvarez would also devote himself to depict natural landscapes. If he were to suffer from some bucolic temptation, he was, however, able to apply some modernist nuances. Such is the case of this Landscape of Spain. Displaying a sober palette that, in that very same year of 1928, will suffer a - chromatic reductionism
(in the expression of the historian António Trinidad Muñoz), he uses delicate contrasts of greens, lilacs and browns. Intertwining several textured patches, the mountains set a soft rhythm that ischallenged by the vertical presence of some isolated wild pines.
The absolute absence of shadows (always scarce in his work), under this cloudy and heavy daylight sky, contradicts naturalist principles and expresses the modernity of his practice, well aware of the assumptions of European avant-garde. Colour models the mountains, just as, in the upper part of the composition, white and gray textures shape a winter sky. Volume is also provided by denser lines of vegetation, as a green outline of the hilltops, in the mid-distance, model the otherwise brown hills. Further away, the mountains that touch the horizon almost merge with the greyish blue sky.
Clearly a part of larger experiments of landscape recordings that include some of Serra da Agrela, in the outskirts of Porto, with identical pictorial solutions, namely to depict the skies (although, in the latter cases, the blue and grey just occupy the upper third of the composition), this Landscape of Spain presents a clear compositional balance between the sky and the earth, in which neither element crushes the other.
EF
(in the expression of the historian António Trinidad Muñoz), he uses delicate contrasts of greens, lilacs and browns. Intertwining several textured patches, the mountains set a soft rhythm that ischallenged by the vertical presence of some isolated wild pines.
The absolute absence of shadows (always scarce in his work), under this cloudy and heavy daylight sky, contradicts naturalist principles and expresses the modernity of his practice, well aware of the assumptions of European avant-garde. Colour models the mountains, just as, in the upper part of the composition, white and gray textures shape a winter sky. Volume is also provided by denser lines of vegetation, as a green outline of the hilltops, in the mid-distance, model the otherwise brown hills. Further away, the mountains that touch the horizon almost merge with the greyish blue sky.
Clearly a part of larger experiments of landscape recordings that include some of Serra da Agrela, in the outskirts of Porto, with identical pictorial solutions, namely to depict the skies (although, in the latter cases, the blue and grey just occupy the upper third of the composition), this Landscape of Spain presents a clear compositional balance between the sky and the earth, in which neither element crushes the other.
EF
