Composition

Juan Batlle Planas

,

Oil on canvas, 180 × 150cm.

In Composición (Composition), this singular work from Batlle Planas’ oeuvre, the artist works with a powerful vertical axis that begins well over the head and extends in successive planes down to the base of the canvas as his point of departure, from which he goes about undoing the composition of the forms horizontally until they form a cross. In some way it is reminiscent of Cubist works, especially those by Picasso where he de-structured the human body into facets. Furthermore, the head, practically the canvas’ only figurative element, can be seen as an homage to, or a quotation of Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (The Young Ladies of Avignon). In a rounded manner, the central axis expands out to the edges of the canvas, through an audacious pattern of pure, kaleidoscope-like colors, one binding to the next in a rhythmic sway of linear curves. Though this should not be seen as a Surrealist work, Batlle Planas introduces an element of chance here. We see it in the strange figure, as if taken out of some bestiary, that flies high above the canvas without any apparent causal relationship to the rest of the assembled construction.