Ascensão I (Ascension I)

“Figuration was progressively abandoned from the end of the 1950s. A forced period in the studio for health reasons led Iberê to return to representation of objects. This stage of his career was the beginning of his study into the emblematic form of the spools. When he was looking through the drawers of his home for a pair of scissors and found these objects, now without their thread, in their pure form, they brought back memories of his childhood. For Iberê they were both subject matter and formal element. During this phase of maturation and consolidation of his work, the forms moved progressively towards abstraction, changing the places they occupied. Depth, represented by the existence of forms on a background, disappeared in favour of a flatness in which the elements were placed on the same surface.
This journey can be observed from the untitled painting of around 1958/1959, to Ascensão I (Ascension I), 1973. In the beginning the spools can still be seen represented in a space suggestive of three-dimensionality, albeit synthesised. Continuation of his formal investigations leads to figure and ground forming the same unique surface. These works are marked by new figure-ground relationships, by matter that formed objects, by repetitions that counter the new – developments as transgressions.”
Icleia Borsa Cattani, Paisagens de dentro: as últimas pinturas de Iberê Camargo (Porto Alegre: Fundação Iberê Camargo, 2009), 50.