Manuel Espinosa

"The only realistic painting is, for me, the one that tries to affirm its material reality before anything else". With this epigrammatic phrase, Espinosa indicated in unequivocal terms the conceptual core of his work, as well as the peculiar purpose of the current to which it belongs: that of Concrete Art. In his work, the pictorial image therefore declares its non-referential character and the semantic congruity of its pure formal values. "The era of representative fiction has come to an end", read the Manifesto de l'Asociación de Arte Concreto-Invención , founded after the end of the Second World War by Espinosa, Hlito, Lozza and Maldonado, with the aim of developing new visual codes that were the mirror of a technological and industrial society. Order, iteration, superimposition, variation are the principles which in Espinosa's work regulate the arrangement of the forms on the surface; the painting included in the collection of the Ekilibrio Foundation, representative of the cycle 18 variaciones sobre mismo theme, gives particular prominence to the last of them, chronologically placed in one of the most relevant research phases of its creative history. Movement, depth and luminous iridescence are the effects that the artist aims to convey to the observer, thanks to the thoughtful use of color and universally recognizable figures such as the square and the circle. As in the writing of the beloved James Joyce, cited several times in the titles of his works, an apparent simplicity of the form conceals the complexity referable to the author's conceptual and poetic intentions.