Mountain Ascent

This painting comes from the end of Broto's Barcelona period, one of his most productive, during which he became part of the Conspiracy Group (Grupo Trama) by the end of the seventies. This collective advocated a return to painting, and Broto consequently positioned himself as one of the greatest exponents of so-called Pintura-pintura, defending abstraction against figuration. In this piece he combines purely visual values and symbols which could speak of lyrical abstraction. The recreation of a large landscape reminiscent of a mountain and the introduction of architectonic elements, in this case stairs, would be recurring elements in his pieces in 1984, a very productive year for Broto. In the words of J. M. Bonet, it is a "spectacular and almost biblical Mountain Ascent" in which the superimposed red paint seems to be reminiscent of lava. In this piece, Broto "arrives at an understanding of nature as the abundance of space" as noted by Fernando Castro Flórez. The color spectrum suggests depth and a tragic sentiment through brushstrokes soaked in pigment which disintegrate the shapes. Broto departs from abstraction to hint at a landscape which can be penetrated, a landscape which in turn romantically hides the rest of a construction.