ABOUT THE WORK

Bold brushstrokes traverse the canvas with a haphazard orientation. The traces of the paint loaded brush are highly visible, overlapping, and forming thick ridges, pools of pigment, and streaks and splatters of impasto. There are some areas of defined color shapes to stabilize and give weight to the composition. This work from 1961 anticipates Joya’s vigorous style in the mid1960s which shows affinity with abstract expressionism in its kinetic impulse, its strong gestural drive, its bold and sensuous handling of the medium with open assertion of the materiality of the work. However, a closer acquaintance with the artist’s work of this period will reveal certain fundamental differences with the action painters, particularly with Jackson Pollock. Earlier, in 1959, Joya further explored his spatial concepts in several canvases of large dimensions, such as “Space Transfiguration”. In these, the artist meant to create a total environment and the visual experience consists in being enveloped in a pervasive and resonant space modified by light and atmosphere. From this evolved the Yeseria series, (yeseria being the intricate relief work of Spanish mudejar structures) characterized by a style of impasted shapes, interlocking, jewel-like facets that glowed from within and at the same time reflected the all-pervasive light. Gesture is very important in this kind of painting. In contrast to this impersonality akin to automatism, Joya’s art derives from subjective forces. Gestural painting draws its sources not only from surrealism but from Asian Calligraphy as well, which places a premium on spontaneity and quick insight. In an arguable statement, Leonidasd Benesa wrote in 1977: “It is true that Fernando Zobel was already painting “non-objective “ or non-figurative abstract works in the Fifties, particularly the ‘Saeta’ series. But it was Joya who was to give “pure painting” a local habitation and a name, his own. This is further said with alld ue respect to Rodolfo Paras Perez, who came up with a solitary prize winning work (AAP annual 1963) called ethereal glow under the influence of Mark Rothko, and to Lee Aguinaldo, with his flicked on texturologies of color, e.g., Red City (also an AAP prize winner), in the spirit of Jackson Pollock and Mathieu. Like Pollock, he directly manipulated paint, also like him; he is physically in the work, transferring his energies to the emerging picture. The physicality of technique as much as the slashed skeins of pigment were what really mattered. Intuition, free association and the painting process itself became both subject and technique right at the beginning