Auki

During the second half of the 1950’s, the work of Fernando de Szyszlo came to reconcile certain constructive rigor with the reflection of intense emotional states. He was thus able to achieve an interplay of the two principal aspects of international abstraction: one geometric, the other lyrical. However, this harmonic sense of composition acquired new resonances after the painter travelled to Washington in 1958, having been called upon by José Gómez Sicre to take on the post of Advisor to the Visual Arts section of the OEA. Although it seems paradoxical, contact with North American abstract expressionism represented a decisive detonation for the ancestralist turn that Szyszlo's painting adopted from that moment. Auki marks the transition between the two periods. This painting is characterized by a plane of colors that speak to one another, brought together amid enveloping atmospheres based on glazes. However, the use of blacks and brilliant reds generates a mysterious expressive atmosphere which is strengthened by the Quechua title. By these means the painter appears to use abstract language to rescue the fragments of a lost sacredness, investigating ancestral atavisms that seem to be taken from the collective memory.