This piece is accompanied by a certificate issued by Don Rafael Perez Madero confirming the authenticity of this lot

Provenance: Bertha Schaefer Gallery, New York City Private Collection, Makati City

Exhibited: Colombus Gallery of Fine Arts (present-day Colombus Museum of Art), Colombus, Ohio, United States, 1974

ABOUT THE WORK

Beginning in 1963, Fernando Zóbel had begun his long sojourn into one of his most productive periods of his artistic career. In this period, Zóbel veered away from his monochromatic hues of white and stark black that were felt in his earlier Serie Negra series into his more internationally renowned colors and aesthetics. As recounted to art historian and Zóbel’s biographer Rafael Pérez-Madero denoted in his book, Zóbel: La Serie Blanca (Ediciones Rayela, 1978) about changing his theme and style, he quipped: “The theme is movement expressed metaphorically by the use of line. The movement of leaves, of trees, of people; movement observed, felt, never imitated but, I hope, translated.” In this painting San Rafael, Zóbel slowly enveloped the colors of ochres and greys that form into an overshadowing light emulsifying out of the stark contrasting dark background. In the frenetic brushstrokes poured into the canvas shows the depth, on which a stark light hampers the sharp black lines that aim to cloud the bright hues of yellow that break free out of its clutches. What is keen to note is that there is a parallelism in his work by referencing Raphael in its title, the archangel who from the Book of Tobit in the Catholic liturgy casted out a demon during the journey of Tobiah in Egypt. By this time, Zóbel was working on his personal project of exhibiting Spanish modern and contemporary art in the Casas Colgadas (Hanging Houses) in his adopted city of Cuenca that will later become the Museo Abstracto de Español.