Ecological and "Mironian" technique
Considering the amount of work produced by this painter during several decades in the silence of her workshop, without ever having felt the need to show it to the public, and considering her success when in the spring of 1995 she finally held a first exhibition in Seville, I find it interesting that Catalonia, where she lives and works, may have the opportunity to contemplate a wide sample of her work.
Her technique is extremely interesting and original. It might be defined, besides, “ecological”, because instead of submitting the canvas to the usual preparation, she leaves it during several months exposed at the mercy of the elements out in the open so that Nature may imprint on it her footstep, which will be the starting point for the painter’s work.
In a brilliant writing on Joan Miró, James Johnson Sweeney in 1970, on occasion of the unforgettable retrospective exhibition at the Hospital de la Santa Cruz, in Barcelona, said that the painter, to produce his paintings, took advantage of any stain which appeared accidentally on the canvas, and repeated the painter’s words: “Even a stain of jam, which may have fallen by accident on the canvas, may suggest a subject to me. I draw around it and, from that point on I base my composition... Even a splash from the brush on the canvas when I clean it may be a suggestion for starting to paint. The following step, however, is carefully calculated, the first stage is free, unconscious, but after that I control the painting to the utmost, with that wish for discipline that I have always felt.”
When I saw Marcos-González’ paintings for the first time, I remembered Miro’s words. The importance that the painter grants to this starting point offered by Nature is such, that she does not mind the hard and patient work needed to paint on an unprepared canvas. Then, in contrast to these oxidation stains appeared at random, she works following the wilful order of the form, organizing her composition, looking for the equilibrium in the geometry and in the harmonious or discordant combination of colour.
Usually, Marcos-González works by series, and it can be said that she explores a given subject until she feels she has depleted it. Her last series is the one which is now on exhibition in Seville, inspired in bullfighting, with the title of “Tauromías. My way with bulls”.
María Lluïssa Borrás, Art criticMORE REVIEWS
Ecological and "Mironian" technique